Chapter 5 - The Spider's Tower
At two o’clock in the morning, the penthouse suite of the Mercer Tower in downtown Manhattan glowed with the cold, sterile hum of four Bloomberg financial terminals.
Julian Mercer stood before the floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the darkened skyline of Central Park. He was fifty-two, impeccably tailored in a charcoal Savile Row three-piece suit, with silver hair swept back from a sharp, predatory face. In his hand, he swirled three fingers of single-malt Scotch.
On his desk, his private encrypted phone buzzed.
He picked it up. "Speak."
"Julian, we have a catastrophic breach," the frantic voice of his political fixer sounded through the speaker. "The Solstice Gala was an ambush. Sophia blew her cover. The entire Hamptons elite watched her silicone prosthetic fall off her body in front of four hundred people."
Julian didn't flinch. His grip on the crystal glass merely tightened until his knuckles went white. "Where is she now?"
"Arthur’s private security took her. She didn't make it to the extraction vehicle. Arthur has locked down the estate. The media is already smelling blood—two local tabloids have picked up the whispers from the catering crew."
"Kill the story," Julian said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "Deploy the retainers to the editors. Threaten immediate defamation lawsuits of one hundred million dollars against any outlet that runs the word 'silicone' or 'prosthetic'."
"It's too late for legal threats, Julian! Arthur isn't going to court. You know how he operates. If he breaks Sophia—"
"Sophia knows nothing that links directly to me," Julian lied smoothly, though a vein in his temple began to pulse violently. "All payments were routed through third-party shell companies in Panama and Nevis. The Bulgarian pharmaceuticals were purchased using untraceable cryptocurrency. She is a low-level grifter with a history of fraud. Her word is worthless against a sitting board member of Sterling Marine."
"You don't understand, Julian! Arthur’s security chief is Marcus Kane! If Kane is working her over, she has already told him about the Cayman trust!"
Julian terminated the call.
He set his Scotch down on the mahogany desk, walked over to his private wall safe behind an abstract oil painting, and opened it. Inside rested a customized Glock 19 and a satellite phone.
Julian dialed an eleven-digit number from memory.
"It’s Mercer," he said when the line connected with a burst of static. "The contingency protocol is activated. Arthur Sterling must not survive until the board meeting at nine o’clock tomorrow morning."
"The target is at his Hamptons compound," a guttural voice replied on the other end. "He has armed private security on site."
"His estate is compromised," Julian ordered, his voice dripping with venomous desperation. "He has his daughter there. He will be distracted, disorganized, and vulnerable. Hit the compound. Burn the main house to the ground if you have to. But eliminate Arthur Sterling and retrieve Sophia Bennett before sunrise. I want the girl taken alive as collateral."
"Understood."
Julian hung up the satellite phone. He turned back to the window, watching the distant lights of New York.
"You should have sold the shipping routes, Arthur," Julian muttered to the glass. "You and Clara were always too sentimental for this world. And sentiment is the first thing that gets a man killed."
Suddenly, the lights in the penthouse flickered.
The high-tech Bloomberg terminals simultaneously snapped to black. The climate-control system died with a heavy, wheezing sigh, plunging the eighty-fourth floor into an unnatural, tomb-like silence.
Julian spun around, drawing the Glock from his waistband with practiced speed. "Security! Stevens! Halloran!"
No answer came through the heavy mahogany doors of his private office.
Then, through the emergency backup lights that cast long, bloody-red shadows across the polished marble floor, the private elevator chimed.
The heavy brushed-steel doors slid open.
Stepping out of the darkness was not a team of corporate lawyers or federal agents.
It was Arthur Sterling, dressed in a black tactical coat, flanked by four heavily armed men whose faces were obscured by ballistic balaclavas. In Arthur’s hand was an electronic tablet, displaying the live surveillance feed of Julian’s offshore bank accounts, ticking down to zero dollar balances by the second.
Arthur stepped into the red light of the penthouse.
May you like
"Did you really think," Arthur said, his voice echoing off the glass walls, "that you could order a hit on my daughter and I wouldn't hear about it before the contract cleared the wire?"
***
