Chapter 7
For the first time, the calm broke.
“You’re willing to let her die for a recording?” he called.
Adrian stepped into the open.
“No.”
“Then bring it.”
Adrian raised the drive between two fingers.
Victor stared at it.
Behind the warehouse, Marcus was already climbing a rusted maintenance ladder toward the second floor.
Adrian walked forward.
One step.
Another.
Victor laughed.
“I always wondered what it would take to make you weak.”
Adrian kept walking.
“You think this is weakness?”
“You built everything your father dreamed about. Routes. Money. Men terrified to cross you. And now you’ll trade it for the woman who cleans your floors.”
Emily closed her eyes.
Adrian stopped beneath the walkway.
“There’s a three-year-old girl at home waiting for her mother.”
“So?”
Adrian’s expression turned cold.
“That is the difference between you and me.”
A scrape sounded behind Victor.
He turned.
Marcus came through the rear window.
Victor shoved Emily aside and fired.
The yard erupted.
Adrian ran.
By the time he reached the upper corridor, Victor was dragging Emily toward a rear stairwell.
Marcus cut him off.
Victor turned.
Adrian came from the other direction.
For the first time in eleven years, Victor Hale had nowhere left to go.
He released Emily.
She stumbled against the wall.
Victor lunged at Adrian.
The fight was short and vicious.
Victor struck first.
Adrian hit the concrete wall.
Victor swung again.
Adrian ducked, drove his shoulder forward and sent them both crashing to the floor.
Victor laughed through a split lip.
“You really are throwing it away.”
Adrian pinned him.
“Throwing what away?”
“Your empire.”
Adrian looked toward Emily.
Her face was exhausted.
But she was watching him.
Alive.
He thought of Lily sitting on the marble stairs.
The purple cup beside his coffee.
Crayon drawings in a locked drawer.
A small hand around two of his fingers.
He looked back at Victor.
“Maybe it needed to be thrown away.”
A gunshot cracked from the far end of the corridor.
Adrian saw the hidden shooter too late.
He threw himself over Emily.
The bullet grazed his shoulder.
Marcus fired once.
Silence returned.
Adrian lifted his head.
Emily was underneath him.
Her eyes were open.
“You came.”
His shoulder burned.
He almost laughed.
“I promised someone.”
Emily’s face crumpled.
“Lily?”
“She’s waiting.”
Emily covered her mouth.
For the first time since her abduction, she cried.
May you like
Not from fear.
From relief.
