Chapter 4 - The Ghost of Marseille
The peace lasted exactly six days.
In the underworld, a vacuum never stays empty for long. The moment Margaret and Michael realized they were cut off from every legitimate and illegitimate asset I owned, they did what desperate, greedy people always do: they sold the only thing of value they had left.
Information.
It was midnight. I was sitting in my private study on the ground floor, reviewing a digital manifest of our Mediterranean shipping containers, when the security alarm didn't ring—it chirped.
A silent, high-priority alert.
Perimeter breach at the western gate. Thermal signatures: four individuals, heavily armed.
I didn't panic. I didn't call the guards. I stood up from my leather desk chair, walked to the antique mahogany bookcase behind my desk, and pressed a hidden brass latch. The shelf swung inward with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a vertical wall rack holding a customized SIG Sauer MPX submachine gun, three spare magazines, and a tactical vest.
I strapped the vest over my black turtleneck in thirty seconds.
Upstairs, Emma was sleeping soundly for the first time in years, the sedatives from the doctor finally allowing her body to heal. I locked the reinforced steel door of the master suite from the outside, engaging the secondary deadbolt that required my thumbprint and an encrypted passcode.
If anyone wanted to reach her, they would have to turn me into ash first.
I stepped out onto the second-floor balcony overlooking the grand foyer just as the front glass doors blew inward in a deafening shower of crystal and splintered wood.
Four men in matte-black tactical gear swarmed into the foyer. They weren't local thugs; they moved with the disciplined, lethal precision of European mercenaries—men trained in the alleyways of Marseille and the industrial docks of Rotterdam.
"Clear!" one shouted in French, sweeping his rifle toward the grand staircase.
I didn't wait for them to look up.
I vaulted over the wrought-iron balcony railing, dropping twelve feet straight down to the marble floor below, landing in a deep tactical crouch directly behind the rear mercenary.
Before he could spin around, my left arm hooked around his throat, dragging him backward while my right hand silenced him with a swift, brutal strike to the base of the skull. He dropped like a sack of wet cement, his rifle clattering against the marble.
The three remaining mercenaries spun around, their muzzle flashes illuminating the darkened foyer in strobe-like bursts of orange light.
Tink! Tink! Tink!
Bullets chewed into the mahogany pillars and shattered the antique vases near the entryway. I rolled behind the heavy marble base of the staircase, pulling the charging handle of the MPX.
"You're late, Viktor!" I called out, my voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings.
From behind the shattered frame of the front door, a tall man with a scarred cheek and an expensive tailored trench coat stepped into the foyer. Viktor Vance? No—Viktor Rostov. The Bratva’s primary enforcer in Western Europe, a man I had crippled financially in a port acquisition in Marseilles three years ago.
"Julian!" Rostov laughed, his accent thick and grating as he kept his submachine gun raised toward the staircase. "Your mother sends her regards! She tells us the safe combination to your office wall safe, and in exchange, we collect a little debt you forgot to pay in France!"
"My mother is an idiot," I said calmly.
"Perhaps," Rostov smiled, stepping further into the light. "But she is also very thorough. Now, where is the girl? We take her, and perhaps we leave you enough breath to crawl to the hospital."
"You won't even leave this room," I whispered.
I didn't step out from behind the pillar. Instead, I pressed a remote detonator switch I had taped beneath the foyer console three days ago.
BOOM.
The secondary foyer doors—rigged with a controlled directional charge—blew inward, sandwiching the two mercenaries closest to the entrance between two tons of solid oak and iron. They didn't even have time to scream.
Rostov stumbled back, his face covered in plaster dust and blood, his rifle slipping from his trembling fingers.
I stepped out from behind the pillar, the barrel of my MPX resting casually against my chest, pointed directly between Rostov’s eyes.
"Tell me, Viktor," I said, walking toward him with slow, measured strides. "Did Margaret tell you that my office safe is empty? Did she tell you that I keep my real ledgers offshore?"
Rostov swallowed hard, his eyes darting toward the exits. The remaining mercenary behind him was already down, groaning in pain.
"She... she said you had ten million in bearer bonds," Rostov stammered, all the bravado draining from his face.
"My mother always did believe in fairy tales," I said.
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I didn't pull the trigger. Killing him right here would leave a mess on the marble that Emma might have to see in the morning. Instead, I reversed the submachine gun and brought the heavy steel stock down across Rostov’s temple with a sickening crunch.
He collapsed to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
