Chapter 8 - HOSTAGE ON THE HUDSON
I sprinted down the rain-slicked wooden pier toward the harbor master's station, the adrenaline coursing through my veins like liquid fire. But when I reached the reinforced steel door of Pier 9, my heart plummeted into my stomach.
The electronic keypad had been pried open and scorched with an acetylene torch.
"Elena!" I shouted, kicking the heavy door off its damaged hinges.
Inside, the office was trashed. Shell casings littered the floorboards, and a trail of blood led out toward the rear loading dock overlooking the churning dark waters of the Hudson River.
Sitting tied to a wooden pillar was not Elena, but Carmine Falcone's personal enforcer, the Russian giant known as Yuri. He was bleeding from a gunshot wound to his thigh, groaning in the dark.
I grabbed Yuri by his hair, jerking his head back. "Where are they?"
"The woman... she isn't normal..." Yuri wheezed, a bloody grin on his face. "She shot my three men before we could disarm her... but Don Falcone's chopper intercepted her at the private slipway. They took her and the baby straight to the Grand Plaza. The Don wants to execute them in front of the entire syndicate board tonight."
Elena had fought like a lioness to protect Mia, but against a helicopter strike team, she had been overwhelmed.
"You're going to call Falcone right now," I told Yuri, pressing my satellite phone into his bloody palm. "Tell him I survived the harbor ambush, and that I'm bringing the encrypted decryption keys for the forty-million-dollar fund in exchange for the child."
"He'll kill you the second you walk through the lobby," Yuri spat.
"He can try," I replied, knocking him unconscious with the butt of my weapon.
I walked back to the Maybach, my mind operating with cold, razor-sharp clarity. To take down Carmine Falcone inside his own fortress, brute force alone would fail. I needed to strike at the very foundation of his power—his money, his alliances, and his arrogant belief that he was untouchable.
I connected my laptop to the satellite uplink, accessing the encrypted drive Elena had entrusted to me. The files were a goldmine: bank routing numbers, offshore accounts, corrupt political payoffs, and recorded telephone conversations between Falcone and federal prosecutors.
With three keystrokes, I scheduled the entire archive to broadcast across every major news network, the FBI financial crimes division, and the international banking switchboards at 3:00 AM.
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Carmine Falcone had two hours left of his empire. And I was going to deliver the final blow in person.
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