Chapter 7 - The Choice on the Balcony
The gunshot was deafening.
The bullet tore through my left shoulder, a blinding white pain exploding down my arm. But the momentum of my charge was unstoppable.
I slammed into Prescott like a freight train, driving him hard against the iron handrail of the balcony, three stories above the stone courtyard below.
His revolver flew from his hand, spinning into the dark night.
I grabbed him by the throat with my right hand, pinning him over the edge of the railing. His legs kicked wildly in the air, his fingers clawing at my wrists as he fought for breath.
"Dominic... please..." Prescott choked out, his face turning purple under the red emergency lights. "We were... brothers..."
"Brothers don't murder mothers in front of their children," I growled, squeezing his windpipe until I felt the cartilage groan beneath my grip.
Below us, sirens wailed in the distance—dozens of law enforcement vehicles racing down the Long Island Expressway toward my gates, their red and blue lights reflecting off the low clouds.
Prescott looked down at the stone courtyard below, then back up into my eyes. He saw no mercy there. He saw only the end.
"Do it..." Prescott gasped, a bloody tear rolling down his cheek. "Send me... to hell..."
My grip tightened. I lifted him another inch over the ledge. All I had to do was open my fingers, and the man who had ruined my life would be gone forever. It was the justice I had sought for fourteen months. The blood debt would be paid.
Then, through the howling wind, a soft sound carried up from the floor below.
The mechanical hiss of the sunroom panic room opening.
I looked down.
Standing on the lower terrace in the freezing cold air were Grace and my three daughters.
Olivia was looking up at the balcony. She wasn't crying anymore. She was watching her father—the man she had just called 'Daddy' for the first time in over a year.
Grace stood beside them, holding Nora in her arms, her eyes fixed on me. She didn't scream. She didn't tell me to stop. But the look in her eyes posed a silent question:
Is this the man you want your daughters to remember?
If I dropped Prescott, I would prove to my children that the world was built only on violence. I would become the monster Prescott had claimed I was.
I stared down at Prescott's terrifying face.
Then I pulled him back over the rail and slammed him hard onto the concrete balcony floor.
Before he could recover, I drove my knee into his ribs, cracking two of them, and pulled a pair of heavy steel zip-ties from my tactical belt, binding his wrists and ankles tightly behind his back.
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"You don't get to die tonight, Prescott," I whispered in his ear, my breath ragged and cold. "You get to rot in a federal cage, and every single day, you'll know that my daughters are growing up happy, safe, and free."
I dragged him into the bedroom, kicked his weapon away, and walked down the stairs to meet my family.
