Chapter 8 - The Shadow Port
The sedan moved at high speed for over an hour, winding through industrial backroads until the salty smell of the ocean filled the air.
Lena was blindfolded, her hands zip-tied securely behind her back. But her mind was working frantically. She remembered Julian’s security lectures, the tactical maps she had seen on his desk, and the way he had taught her to pay attention to details—the turns of the road, the sound of foghorns, the clinking of shipping containers.
They were at the abandoned docks near Port Newark—a neglected sector of the harbor that Hayes’s shipping company had formerly controlled.
When the blindfold was finally ripped off her eyes, Lena found herself inside a vast, rusted shipping warehouse. Cold wind whistled through cracks in the metal walls, and the smell of rot and saltwater was overpowering.
Sitting tied to a wooden chair in the center of the concrete floor was her sister, Maya, bruised and weeping.
"Lena!" Maya cried out, her face swollen with tears. "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!"
"Maya!" Lena rushed toward her, but a heavy hand grabbed her by the shoulder, shoving her roughly into a second chair and tying her ropes securely.
Stepping out from the shadows of a stack of cargo crates was Richard Hayes’s lead attorney, a slick, ruthless lawyer named Victor Vance—no relation to Julian, but a man known throughout the city for doing the cartel's dirty work.
"Miss Moore," Victor said, smiling coldly as he adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. "Thank you for being so cooperative. It really saves us a great deal of messy negotiation."
"You have me," Lena said, struggling against her bonds, her eyes blazing with fierce anger. "Let my sister go! She doesn't know anything about Hayes or the shooting!"
"Oh, neither of you is going anywhere until after the grand jury deadline passes tomorrow morning," Victor chuckled, pulling a silver pocket watch from his vest. "By eleven AM tomorrow, the indictment will fail due to the absence of the key witness. After that... well, accidents happen at sea all the time."
"Julian will find you," Lena growled, her voice full of absolute certainty. "He will hunt you to the ends of the earth for this."
Victor laughed, a dry, cruel sound. "Julian Vance doesn't even know where you are. Your phone was left behind in his study. The estate security thinks you slipped out for a walk. By the time he realizes you're gone, you'll be fifty miles out in international waters."
What Victor didn't know was that three weeks ago, after the threat from Victoria, Julian had given Lena a small, elegant silver pendant on a delicate chain.
It was a custom piece of jewelry containing a micro-GPS transmitter linked directly to Julian's personal security server.
And right now, sitting beneath the collar of her winter coat, the tiny silver pendant was pulsing a steady, invisible tracking signal into the night sky.
Ten miles away, on the highway leading back to the estate, Julian’s armored Maybach suddenly screeched to a halt across three lanes of traffic.
Julian pulled his phone from his pocket, his face turning deathly pale as the red emergency alert flashed across his screen: "SUBJECT LENA: TRACKER ACTIVE OUTSIDE PERIMETER."
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Julian’s gray eyes turned into liquid ice. He tapped his earpiece, his voice roaring through the private security channel like a terrifying storm.
"All tactical units, this is Vance," Julian commanded, his tone lethal, precise, and devoid of any mercy. "Lena has been taken. Converge on Port Newark, Dock 4. Execute Lethal Protocol on all hostile targets. I am driving in myself."
