Chapter 10 - The Ambush at Pier 54
That afternoon, Dr. Marchetti arrived for my follow-up examination. To my immense relief, the swelling in my ankle had reduced by eighty percent, and with a specialized carbon-fiber supportive brace, I was cleared to walk short distances without crutches.
While Luca was in high-level strategic meetings with his captains in the underground command room, I decided to visit the private estate library on the second floor to find a storybook for Emma’s bedtime.
As I browsed the leather-bound volumes, my phone buzzed in my dress pocket. It was an unknown Seattle area code.
I answered cautiously. “Hello?”
A raspy, frantic voice came through the receiver. “Ava... please... don’t hang up!”
It was Mrs. Chen.
My stomach knotted. “Mrs. Chen? What’s wrong? Are you at the Bellevue hotel?”
“Ava, they found me!” Mrs. Chen sobbed, the sound of glass breaking echoing in the background. “Two men with Russian accents... they broke into my hotel room! They took your mother’s antique jewelry box that you left with me for safekeeping! They said if you don’t bring the trust passcode to Pier 54 in thirty minutes, they will burn the box and kill me!”
My blood turned to ice.
My mother’s jewelry box contained the only remaining photographs of my mother before she passed away from cancer when I was six, along with her wedding ring and a recorded voice cassette she had left for me. It was the only tangible piece of my mother I had left in this world.
“Mrs. Chen, hold on! Don't let them hurt you!” I panicked.
“Pier 54, Ava! Come alone or they will shoot me!” The line went dead with a sickening click.
Panic overtook all reason. I knew I should run downstairs and alert Luca, but the thought of sweet Mrs. Chen being executed because of my family’s cursed history made my chest seize with terror. If Luca mobilized a strike team, the Russians would spot them from a mile away and kill Mrs. Chen before anyone could breach the pier.
I couldn't let an innocent seventy-year-old woman die for me.
I grabbed my coat, slipped on my flat shoes with the supportive brace, and rushed down the service elevator that led to the secondary garage. Using the spare keys to an unmarked estate sedan kept for household staff, I started the engine and drove through the automated rear gate before the main security checkpoint could log the vehicle's departure.
The drive through the gray, drizzling Seattle afternoon felt like a descent into a nightmare.
Pier 54 was a decaying industrial shipping dock on the southern edge of the waterfront, filled with rusted cargo containers, abandoned cranes, and the relentless pounding of cold gray waves against rotting wooden pilings.
I pulled the car to a stop beside a hollowed-out warehouse. Rain lashed against the windshield.
Taking a deep breath, clutching the carbon-fiber brace on my leg, I stepped out into the freezing downpour.
“Mrs. Chen!” I called out, my voice swallowed by the howling wind. “I’m here!”
From behind a stack of rusted steel shipping containers, three men emerged.
None of them were holding Mrs. Chen.
In the center stood Sergei Volkov, holding a digital audio recording device—the very device that had synthesized Mrs. Chen’s panicked voice using AI voice-cloning technology.
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Standing beside him, his face bruised and swollen but grinning like a deranged hyena, was Jake Martinez.
“Welcome to the end of the line, Ava,” Sergei smiled coldly, pocketing the voice recorder. “You really are as naive as your father was.”
