Chapter 2 - The Red Silk Trap
Gunfire shredded the silence.
The chandelier above Table Four exploded into thousands of glass daggers.
Women screamed.
Men dove under white linen tables like terrified rats.
Vincent shoved Dominic backward into the shadows of the stone pillar.
I didn't dive for cover.
I dove for the table.
My fingers clamped around the encrypted phone before it hit the rug.
A nine-millimeter round gouged a crater into the mahogany wood where my wrist
had just been.
Wood splinters stung my cheek.
The countdown timer was still ticking.
08:14.
08:13.
Isabella wasn’t screaming.
She was crawling on her hands and knees toward the tactical squad.
“Kill them!” she shrieked. “Kill them all! Don't let her touch the confirmation
code!”
Vincent returned fire.
Three deafening, rhythmic cracks from his Kimber .45.
The lead gunman collapsed onto the hardwood floor, spraying red across the
dessert cart.
Dominic didn’t run.
He drew a small, customized firearm from an ankle holster with absolute
precision.
He fired two rounds through the smoke.
A second hitman dropped behind the coat check partition.
“Elena!” Dominic roared over the chaos.
He called me by my real name.
“Can you cancel the transfer?”
I slid behind an overturned marble credenza.
The screen required a secondary biometric token.
07:32.
“I need her thumb!” I shouted back.
Glass rained over my shoulders.
Isabella was nearly at the restaurant exit.
The two remaining shooters were laying down suppressing fire to cover her
retreat.
Muzzle flashes strobed through the smoky room like strobe lights in hell.
“Vincent! Cover!” Dominic bellowed.
Dominic didn't wait for his bodyguard.
He charged through the crossfire.
He moved like a phantom through the debris.
He tackled Isabella three feet from the shattered glass doorway.
She clawed at his eyes, screaming curses that would make a sailor blush.
“He offered me three times what you're worth, Dominic!” she screamed.
“You're dinosaur blood! You're finished!”
Dominic pinned her right wrist to the bloody floor with his knee.
He didn't strike her.
He simply dragged her backward by the silk collar of her dress.
He hauled her straight to my position behind the credenza.
“Do it,” Dominic ordered.
His eyes were completely black with rage.
I grabbed Isabella's right hand.
She tried to curl her fingers into a fist.
I bent her thumb back until the tendon stretched to its absolute limit.
She let out a piercing wail.
I slammed her trembling thumb against the sensor pad.
The screen turned amber.
TRANSFER PENDING AUTHORIZATION.
ENTER MASTER CIPHER.
“The cipher, Isabella,” I whispered into her ear.
She spat blood onto my white shirt collar.
“Go to hell, little girl. You have five minutes before the shell company
liquidates everything.”
04:55.
“I don't need her,” I said to Dominic.
Dominic looked down at me.
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the transaction routing header,” I said, pointing the screen at him.
“The receiving bank is Vance Trust International.”
Dominic’s entire body went rigid.
The name hit him harder than any bullet could have.
“Julian Vance,” Dominic muttered through clenched teeth.
His lifelong business partner.
The godfather to his deceased brother's children.
“Julian set this up,” I explained, my fingers flying across the keypad.
“Isabella didn't write this algorithm. She doesn't have the brains.”
“Hey!” Isabella shrieked from the floor.
“Shut up,” Vincent grunted, pressing the smoking barrel of his gun against her
temple.
She instantly went mute.
“Julian Vance uses an inverted RSA algorithm based on his father's naval unit,”
I said.
My heart was beating like a war drum against my ribs.
I had memorized that cipher three years ago.
The cipher that ruined my own father's shipping company.
02:10.
01:59.
My thumb typed twelve characters in rapid succession:
V-A-N-C-E-1-9-7-4-X-X-0
The phone buzzed violently.
A deep red graphic covered the display:
TRANSACTION CANCELED.
FUNDS REVERTED TO PRIMARY DOMICILE.
SEIZED AMOUNT: $39,460,000.
The silence returned to the restaurant, thick and suffocating with cordite
smoke.
Isabella slumped against the marble baseboard, completely defeated.
Her hair was a ruined nest.
Her face was smeared with ash and tears.
She had lost everything.
Dominic stood up slowly.
He adjusted the lapels of his custom charcoal suit.
He wiped a speck of drywall dust from his shoulder.
He looked at the bodies on the floor.
Then he looked down at Isabella.
“Get her out of my sight,” Dominic said quietly to Vincent.
“Take her to the basement on 14th Street. Don't touch her until I arrive.”
Vincent nodded.
He dragged Isabella out through the service exit like a sack of wet laundry.
The restaurant was dead quiet now.
Sirens were wailing in the far distance, coming up Fifth Avenue.
Dominic turned around.
He walked over to me.
I was still sitting on the floor, my back against the wall, holding the burner
phone.
He offered me his hand.
His fingers were warm, steady, and covered in gunpowder residue.
I didn't take it.
I stood up on my own strength.
Dominic let his hand drop.
A razor-thin smile touched the corner of his lips.
“You’re no waitress, Elena,” he murmured.
“No,” I replied evenly.
He stepped closer, towering over me.
“And you didn't learn Julian Vance’s private military ciphers from waiting
tables.”
“No, I didn't.”
“Then why are you in my restaurant?” he asked softly.
He reached inside his coat.
I tensed, preparing to strike his throat.
Instead, he pulled out a gold cigarette case and snapped it open.
“Because Julian Vance didn't just steal from you, Dominic,” I said.
“Three years ago, he killed my father to steal his shipping permits.”
Dominic froze with the unlit cigarette between his lips.
He stared at me with an intensity that burned.
“Your father was Marcus Valli?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
Dominic closed the gold case with a metallic snap.
“Marcus was an honest man,” Dominic said quietly.
“Which is why he ended up at the bottom of the East River,” I countered.
Dominic took a long breath through his nose.
The sirens were getting louder.
Two minutes away, at most.
“We need to leave,” Dominic said. “Now.”
“I don't work for you,” I said, stepping toward the kitchen exit.
Dominic moved faster than a striking viper.
His hand clamped around my upper arm.
Not painfully, but unbreakable.
“You just cost Julian Vance thirty-nine million dollars, Elena.”
He leaned down until his eyes were level with mine.
“Every killer between Boston and Miami is going to hunt your scent before
midnight.”
He opened the back exit door.
A black armored Maybach was idling in the pouring rain in the alleyway.
“You want your revenge on Julian Vance?” Dominic whispered.
“Get in the car.”
I hesitated for half a second.
May you like
Then the restaurant front windows shattered under a hail of heavy sniper rounds
from the building across the street.
