Chapter 4 - The Dark Docks
The heavy silence inside the sealed vault was suffocating.
"Caleb!" Dominic roared, throwing his shoulder against the three-inch-thick steel door. The metal didn't yield an inch. "Caleb! Do you hear me?!"
"The radio signals are blocked by the steel reinforcement, Dominic," Mara said, her voice remarkably calm as she stepped toward the electrical panel mounted beside the desk. "He lowered an electronic jammer when the door shut."
Dominic turned around, his eyes wild with a frantic, desperate energy he had never shown in his life. "We have twenty-four minutes. The docks are fifteen miles from here through night traffic. If Thomas puts Mia on that freighter, I will never find her again."
"Then stop trying to break the door," Mara said, pointing to an old industrial air vent near the ceiling in the back of the room. "Look at the rust patterns around that duct. It’s an old coal chute."
Dominic stepped over to the duct, grabbing the iron grate with his bare hands. Muscles strained along his forearms as he gritted his teeth, letting out a primal roar of effort. With a screech of tearing metal, he ripped the heavy iron grate completely off the brick wall, exposing a steep, narrow shaft leading upward.
"It leads to the alley behind the hotel," Mara said, examining the shaft. "Can Rook make it up there?"
"He doesn't have a choice," Dominic said, looking down at the blind dog. "And neither do we."
Five minutes later, covered in black coal dust and soot, Dominic, Mara, and Rook burst out into the freezing night air of a back alley near the Harrington Hotel. Caleb and four of Dominic’s most loyal enforcers were waiting near the running sedans, their faces turning pale as they saw their boss emerge from the ground.
"Boss!" Caleb gasped. "We thought the tunnel collapsed!"
"Thomas took Mia to Dock 14," Dominic ordered, vaulting into the driver's seat of the lead high-powered armored SUV. "Get in! Now!"
Mara didn't wait for an invitation. She slid into the front passenger seat, dragging Rook into the footwell between her legs.
The armored SUV roared to life, its twin-turbo engine screaming as Dominic slammed his foot on the accelerator, tearing out of the alley and running every red light toward the Boston waterfront.
Rain lashed against the windshield like thrown gravel. The speedometer needle climbed past eighty, then ninety miles per hour as Dominic wove the heavy vehicle through city traffic with terrifying precision.
"Why did Thomas keep her alive, Dominic?" Mara asked over the roar of the engine. "If he wanted your money, why not just kill her six years ago?"
"Because Thomas knew I would never give up the keys to the family’s international shipping lines as long as I was seeking revenge for my wife," Dominic said, his hands gripping the leather steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. "He needed a puppet king. But more importantly... Thomas was in love with Julia."
Mara turned her head, shocked. "Your wife?"
"Julia rejected him before she chose me," Dominic said, his voice thick with old, painful memories. "Mia looks exactly like her mother. Keeping Mia in that room wasn't just leverage for Thomas... it was a twisted, sick way of keeping a piece of Julia trapped in his world."
Rook let out a sharp, anxious bark from the footwell, his heavy paws resting on Mara’s lap as if he understood every word.
Up ahead, through the sheet of falling rain, the towering rusty cranes and giant shipping containers of Dock 14 appeared like dark monsters against the stormy Atlantic ocean.
A massive, rusted panamanian cargo freighter was moored against the pier, its diesel engines chugging loudly as black smoke poured from its stacks.
May you like
"They're preparing to cast off!" Caleb yelled from the rear seat, racking his weapon.
"They aren't leaving," Dominic growled, slamming the heavy SUV straight through the chain-link security gates of the dock terminal in a shower of sparks and twisted metal.
