Chapter 35 - The Leverage of the Desperate
"Pull the car over, Marcus."
"I can't do that, Lauren." His voice was shaking, but his foot remained firm on the accelerator. "The handoff is at the abandoned quarry off Exit 14. We give them the drives. Sterling promised me immunity for you, an offshore annuity, and a quiet relocation to Canada."
"He's lying to you!" I yelled, leaning forward against the safety partition. "You're a cop! You know how syndicates operate! Once they have the ledger, you're the loose end holding a badge! They will put two bullets in the back of your head and dump this cruiser in the quarry lake with my children inside!"
"He gave me his word!" Marcus shouted back, tears finally spilling over his lashes.
"His word?" I reached into the diaper bag, pulled the heavy canister of formula out, and twisted the lid off. I reached deep into the powder and pulled out the three sleek black drives, holding them over the open passenger window gap.
"Stop this car right now, or I throw all three into the storm at seventy miles per hour."
Marcus slammed on the brakes.
The anti-lock system screamed as the heavy sedan fishtailed violently across the slick asphalt. Tires spun, biting into the wet shoulder gravel before the cruiser ground to a shuddering halt against a rusted guardrail.
Behind me, Liam and Maya burst into terrified wails. Noah began to scream, his tiny face turning crimson.
Marcus whipped around in the driver's seat, his hand dropping toward his service weapon. "Lauren, don't do this!"
"Draw your gun, Marcus!" I challenged, my voice roaring over the cries of my three infants. "Shoot the mother of three who bled on your floorboards! Shoot me, and watch the drives slide into the river below this guardrail! Then go tell Victor Sterling why his sixty-million-dollar blackmail registry is sitting at the bottom of the Schuylkill!"
He froze, his fingers hovering an inch above his leather holster. He looked at the screaming triplets, then at my eyes—wide, feral, and stripped of all the timid submission Scott had beaten into me for three years.
He saw a woman who had survived carrying three human beings inside a ruined body, who had endured public humiliation and cruel domestic contempt, and who had absolutely nothing left to fear.
Slowly, Marcus pulled his hand away from his weapon and dropped his forehead against the steering wheel, sobbing into the vinyl.
"What do you want?" he whispered, broken. "Tell me what you want, Lauren. We're both dead anyway."
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"We're not dead," I said, wiping a tear from my cheek with the back of my hand, my voice turning to steel. "We’re going to buy your daughter's medicine. And then we’re going to burn Victor Sterling's empire to the ground."
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