Chapter 4 - The Betrayal at Mott Street
"Clear the rooms!" a harsh voice roared from the hallway outside. "Find the girl and the blind man! Daniel wants them alive, but he didn't say anything about keeping them whole!"
Hannah gasped, rushing over to the cot to pull Lucy into her arms. Lucy woke up with a startled cry, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder.
"They tracked us," Hannah panicked, looking at Dr. Chen. "How did they find us so fast?"
"The train yards," Grant said coldly, his instinct returning instantly. He stood up from the chair, pulling the matte-black revolver from his heavy coat. "Daniel has informants on every freight line in the five boroughs. He knew where the timber car was headed."
"There is a fire escape in the back!" Dr. Chen whispered urgently, pointing toward a small window behind his desk. "It leads to the roof of the poultry market next door! Go! I will stall them!"
"No, Samuel," Grant said, stepping toward the wooden interior door of the clinic. "I’m not running anymore."
"Grant, you can't see!" Hannah cried out, running over to grab his arm. "There are at least four armed men out there!"
Grant turned his blind face toward her, his grip on the revolver absolute and unshakeable. "I spent five years sitting in a dark room listening to footsteps, Hannah. I know how men move in the dark better than they do."
He looked toward Dr. Chen. "Samuel, turn off the main breaker switch."
Dr. Chen understood instantly. He lunged across the room, grabbing a heavy iron lever mounted beside the door frame, and yanked it down with all his weight.
CLACK!
The entire apartment plunged into total, pitch-black darkness.
The streetlamp glow from the rain-slicked window was completely blocked by heavy blackout curtains. The room became an abyss where light did not exist.
Shouts of confusion erupted in the hallway outside.
"What the hell? The lights went out!"
"Find a flashlight! Move up!"
The door to the clinic was kicked off its hinges, crashing onto the floor with a deafening bang. Three heavily armed enforcers burst into the dark room, the bright beams of their tactical flashlights cutting wildly through the shadows.
"I can't see anything!" one of the guards yelled, swinging his light back and forth.
Grant didn't need light.
He stood six feet from the door, his ears pinpointing the exact location of the lead guard’s heavy boots squeaking against the wet linoleum floor.
BANG!
The revolver in Grant’s hand roared, the flash of gunpowder illuminating his stone-cold face for a fraction of a second.
The lead guard let out a choked scream, dropping his shotgun as he collapsed to the floor.
"He’s in the room! Shoot!" the second guard screamed, opening fire blindly into the dark with a submachine gun. Bullets tore through the medicine cabinets, shattering glass jars and raining dried herbs and liquid across the floor.
Hannah covered Lucy with her body behind the heavy iron desk, her heart pounding so loud she was sure the gunmen could hear it.
Grant moved like a shadow. He slipped behind a copper cabinet, his acute sense of hearing tracking the second gunman’s ragged breathing.
BANG! BANG!
Two precise shots echoed through the small apartment. The second gunman stumbled backward, crashing into the wooden doorframe before slumping motionless against the wall.
The third gunman—a tall, heavily built enforcer named Marcus, who had served as Daniel Cross’s personal bodyguard for three years—panicked. He swung his tactical flashlight around wildly, the beam catching Grant’s dark figure standing near the slit-lamp microscope.
"I got you, you blind bastard!" Marcus snarled, raising his pistol.
"Lucy!" Hannah screamed from behind the desk. "The light!"
In that split second, three-year-old Lucy—remembering her mother’s instructions—reached out from under Hannah’s coat and switched on her small, bright yellow flashlight, shining the beam directly into Marcus’s eyes.
The sudden, unexpected glare caught Marcus completely off guard. He blinked, flinched, and swung his weapon toward the child.
That half-second was all Grant needed.
Grant closed the distance between them in two massive strides, grabbing Marcus’s wrist with his left hand and twisting it with bone-crushing force. The pistol clattered to the floor. Grant drove his heavy right fist into Marcus’s throat, followed by a devastating strike to his jaw.
Marcus hit the floor like a sack of concrete, completely unconscious.
Silence returned to the clinic, broken only by the sound of falling rain outside and the heavy, rhythmic breathing of Grant Mercer standing in the center of the dark room.
Grant slowly lowered his revolver. He turned his face toward the corner where Hannah and Lucy were hiding.
"Hannah," Grant called out softly, his voice devoid of the terrifying aggression he had displayed seconds ago. "Are you and Lucy hurt?"
Hannah slowly stood up from behind the desk, holding Lucy tightly against her chest. She looked at the three fallen enforcers, then at the blind man standing amidst the ruined glass, holding a smoking gun.
"We're... we're okay, Grant," Hannah whispered, her voice trembling with awe and fear. "We're safe."
Dr. Chen stepped out from the back hallway, holding a small oil lamp he had lit with a match. The soft yellow light filled the ruined clinic.
"They were just the advance team," Dr. Chen said, his face pale as he looked at the fallen men. "Daniel Cross will be here himself within the hour. You must leave New York tonight."
"No," Grant said, his storm-gray eyes flashing in the lamplight as he turned to face Dr. Chen. "We don't leave New York. We go to Pier 17."
Hannah stared at him. "Pier 17? Grant, that’s where the explosion happened five years ago! That’s Daniel’s stronghold!"
"It’s where my wife and daughter died," Grant said, his voice dropping into a register of terrifying, absolute resolve. "And it’s where Daniel is hosting the annual winter meeting of the waterfront Commission tonight at midnight. He plans to announce my death and claim my empire in front of every crime boss in New York."
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Grant reached out, finding Hannah’s face with his hand.
"Samuel is going to give me the counter-acting drops tonight," Grant promised softly. "And tomorrow at midnight, when I walk onto Pier 17... I am going to look Daniel Cross in the eyes when I kill him."
