Chapter 9 - The Final Flight
I carefully set Lila down, pulled her blanket up to her chin, and picked up the note with trembling fingers.
Vincent,
If you're reading this, Silas has already told you the truth. I'm sorry. I didn't want it to end this way, but the debts were too high, and he promised me a new life in Zurich. The antidote for Lila's drops is locked inside the wall safe in my dressing room. The combination is your wedding anniversary.
Don't come looking for me.
Elena.
I crushed the paper into a tight ball in my fist, standing up so fast the room spun.
Elena thought she had won. She thought she could poison my daughter, betray our family for blood money, and fly off to the Swiss Alps to live out her days on stolen luxury. She didn't understand the fundamental rule of the world I ruled: money could buy silence, and fear could buy compliance, but betrayal carried a price that no bank in Zurich could ever cash out.
I walked out of Lila's room, locked the door behind me with my own key, and pulled my satellite phone from my pocket as I strode down the hall toward Elena's dressing room.
I hit speed dial number one.
It answered on the first ring.
"Boss?" Marcus, my most trusted caporegime and head of internal security, barked into the receiver. "We heard the perimeter alarms go off. Are you—"
"Cancel the perimeter," I commanded, my voice flat, cold, and dripping with lethal finality. "Marcus, I want every available man stationed at the private terminals of Fulton County Airport within fifteen minutes."
"Fulton County?" Marcus asked, confusion evident in his tone. "Isn't that where Mrs. Moretti's scheduled private charter—"
"She's not Mrs. Moretti anymore," I interrupted, stepping into Elena's pristine, white-marble dressing room and punching the birthday combination into her wall safe. The heavy steel door popped open, revealing a velvet-lined medical pouch containing a small glass ampoule labeled ANTIDOTE - KANE RESEARCH LABS.
I grabbed the pouch, sliding it into my jacket.
"Marcus," I continued, walking toward the balcony doors that overlooked the dark expanse of the Atlanta skyline. "Elena is currently on a Gulfstream G500 headed across the Atlantic. I want her plane grounded before it crosses the state line of Georgia. I don't care if you have to scramble our own choppers to box her in mid-air. Bring her back to me."
"And if the pilots refuse to land?" Marcus asked, the steel in his own voice sharpening.
May you like
"Then shoot out their engines," I said coldly. "Nobody leaves my city with my daughter's life in their suitcase."
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