Chapter 9 - The Collision
By dawn, the storm had cleared, leaving Seattle blanketed in a crisp, blinding sheet of morning sunlight. The frozen puddles along the waterfront glittered like broken glass under a clear blue sky.
I sat in my study at the Medina estate, a cup of black coffee cooling untouched on the mahogany desk. Elena stood near the window, watching quietly as the little girl—whose name we had learned was Maya, sleeping soundly through the name coincidence—rested on the sofa in the corner.
The secure landline buzzed.
I picked it up immediately. "Report."
"It's done, Boss," Vance’s voice came through, crisp and victorious. "Julian signed the deposition. The U.S. Attorney’s strike force just executed search warrants on Thorne’s financial headquarters in downtown Seattle. His accounts are frozen, his offshore trusts have been seized, and his legal team is already scrambling to cut individual plea deals."
"And Thorne?" I asked.
"Fled his penthouse ten minutes before the marshals arrived. Word is he’s heading for his private hangar at Boeing Field, trying to catch a charter flight to Mexico."
I looked out the window across the sparkling expanse of Lake Washington toward the distant skyline of the city I owned.
"He won't make it to the tarmac," I said.
I rolled my chair back from the desk, wheeled myself over to the corner of the room where little Maya was beginning to stir, her dark eyes blinking open as she rubbed her face with small, soft hands.
She looked up at me, her expression sleepy and entirely unafraid.
"Are we still going to eat pancakes?" she asked softly.
A slow, foreign sensation stirred deep within my chest—something lighter and sharper than the cold calculation that had governed my life since the accident.
"We are," I said, a faint smile touching the corners of my mouth. "As many as you want."
Before I could wheel her toward the kitchen, the heavy oak front doors of the study flew open with a violent crash.
May you like
Marcus Thorne stood in the doorway, wet with melted snow, his face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated desperation. In his hand, he held a compact, silenced automatic pistol, pointed straight at my chest.
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