Chapter 13 - The Final Confrontation at the Pier Where It All Began
Mason stepped out from behind the desk, positioning his body directly between Julian’s weapon and me.
“Drop the detonator, Julian,” Mason said, his voice entirely devoid of fear. “The facility is surrounded by federal tactical teams. You won't make it past the front gate.”
“I don't need to make it past the gate!” Julian laughed hysterically, his finger hovering over the red trigger button. “I was born to take what your father stole from my family! You took my money! You took my name! You humiliated me in front of the entire world!”
He pointed the barrel of the rifle directly at my head, his hands shaking with manic rage.
“Walk to the window, Valerie,” Julian snarled. “Walk to the edge of the pier, or I press this button right now and turn us all into ash.”
Mason looked at me, giving me a microscopic nod. We had anticipated that Julian’s backers would attempt a desperate final strike. We were prepared.
I stepped slowly toward the ruined doorway, leading the way down the private elevator that opened directly onto the central dry dock pier—the very pier where our parents had built their first commercial vessel thirty years ago.
The storm outside was ferocious. Lightning cracked across the dark Atlantic sky, illuminating the colossal steel hull of a half-finished supertanker resting in the dry dock basin below. The wind howled off the ocean, whipping rain against our faces.
Julian backed us against the edge of the high industrial gantry overlooking the sixty-foot drop into the churning sea below.
“Look at it, Valerie!” Julian screamed over the roar of the gale. “This is where it ends! You survived the river, but you won't survive this fall!”
“Julian, listen to me,” I shouted back, holding my hands up, keeping his focus entirely locked on my eyes. “It’s over. Vance confessed to everything. He gave the FBI the safe deposit keys containing Victor’s original ledgers. Your father didn't love you. He used you as a weapon to fight his petty, jealous war.”
“Shut up! Shut up!” Julian wailed, pressing the detonator tighter against his palm. “He was my father!”
“And he abandoned you, just like you abandoned me in that car!” I yelled back, stepping forward instead of backward, my voice cutting through the thunder. “You are a pathetic, cowardly thief who hid behind women and lawyers because you could never build anything of your own!”
Julian’s face contorted into pure, blinding rage. “DIE!”
He raised the rifle to pull the trigger.
In that exact microsecond, Mason moved.
With the explosive power of an Olympic sprinter, Mason closed the ten-foot gap between them before Julian’s finger could complete the trigger pull. Mason’s left hand struck Julian’s wrist with bone-shattering force, sending the rifle spinning off the gantry into the dark abyss below.
With his right hand, Mason clamped his fingers around the firing mechanism of the C4 detonator, jamming his steel tactical pen behind the trigger, preventing the electrical circuit from closing.
Julian shrieked in fury, lunging forward with a hidden combat knife, slashing wildly at Mason’s throat.
Mason ducked beneath the blade with fluid, lethal precision. He drove a devastating palm strike directly into Julian’s solar plexus, knocking the air from his lungs, followed by a sweeping roundhouse kick that shattered Julian’s right knee with an audible CRACK.
Julian collapsed onto the metal grating of the gantry, screaming in agony, clutching his ruined leg.
Mason effortlessly stripped the suicide vest from Julian’s chest, disarmed the blasting caps, and tossed the useless explosive harmlessly onto the wet deck.
Julian looked up through the pouring rain, coughing up blood, staring at the two of us standing over him like unbreakable titans.
“Why...?” Julian gasped, his spirit finally, completely crushed. “Why couldn't you just die...?”
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I stepped forward, looking down at the man who had tried to drown me, feeling nothing but pity for his pathetic, hollow existence.
“Because, Julian,” I said softly, as the blinding searchlights of four police helicopters bathed the gantry in brilliant white light, “the sea does not belong to thieves.”
