Chapter 7 - The PivotI stared at Julian across the wet concrete floor. The silence stretched thin, broken only by the relentless drumming of rain pouring through the roof.
"You really think I walked into this building without a contingency plan, Julian?" I asked, my voice dangerously calm.
Julian’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second. "You're alone. Your men are outside."
"Are they?"
I tapped the encrypted radio clipped to my collar twice.
Instantly, the high-intensity emergency floodlights mounted along the towering ceiling rafters exploded into blinding white life, washing the entire cavern in searing illumination.
The mercenaries cursed, instinctively shielding their eyes from the sudden glare.
At the exact same second, from the high catwalks above, Marcus’s voice boomed through the PA system: "Drop your weapons or your heads explode!"
Red laser sights danced across the chests of every single mercenary in the room. Ten elite snipers had them dead to rights from the upper gantries.
Julian’s face drained of color. He lunged forward, grabbing Clara by the hair and pressing his own pistol to her throat. "Drop your lights! Do it, or I blow her brains out right now!"
He thought he still held all the cards. He thought he was the master chess player.
He didn't realize I had stopped playing chess twenty minutes ago.
"Julian," I said, taking a slow step forward, leveling my Sig Sauer right between his eyes. "You forgot the golden rule of the North District."
"What rule?!" he shrieked, panic cracking his smooth facade.
"Never trust a traitor."
Before Julian could pull his trigger, a deafening explosion echoed from the loading bay behind him. The heavy steel fire doors blasted inward in a cloud of smoke and splintered wood.
A sleek, heavily armored black SUV tore through the entrance, its high-beam headlights blinding everyone in its path.
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And standing through the sunroof, holding a customized tactical shotgun with a wicked grin, wasn't one of my enforcers.
It was Vittorio.
