Chapter 96 - The Midnight Crossing
The rain turned to sleet as Marcus steered the second attacker’s unmarked black sedan onto the lower deck of the Manhattan Bridge.
Behind us, Tenth Avenue was swallowed by the gray morning mist. Julian was alive—we had pulled him from the suburban; the bullet had creased his temple, knocking him unconscious, but he was breathing. Marcus had ordered two of his personal off-grid medics to secure the diner, clear Donald's body, and keep the federal scouts blind to what lay beneath booth four.
Every mile we crossed over the East River felt like tearing through wet paper.
Marcus’s left hand gripped the steering wheel so hard the leather groaned. His right hand remained clamped over his side, the fresh blood soaking through a dark wool trench coat he had stripped from one of the dead shooters.
"Why 0-4-1-8?" I asked, looking at the blood-stained slip of paper Donald had given me.
Marcus didn't turn his head, but his jaw clenched. "April 18th. The day Maya was born."
A lump formed in my throat. "Elena set the code."
"Elena never trusted anyone completely," Marcus said, his voice dropping into a ragged whisper. "Not even me. When she realized the Anvil was rotting from the inside, she built walls between every compartment. She knew that if Evelyn broke me, I couldn't give up what I didn't know."
"She protected you," I said. "And you spent seven years believing she was dead."
"I spent seven years being a monster, Sarah," Marcus corrected, his voice laced with bitter self-loathing. "I thought if I burned enough of Manhattan, if I made every crew in this city fear my name, it would fill the hole she left. But all I did was leave Maya alone in an empty penthouse with guards who didn't give a damn about her."
He looked over at me, the bridge lights flashing across his sharp, exhausted profile.
"And then she walked out into the rain," Marcus murmured. "And found you."
"She was terrified, Marcus. She was clutching that little copper token, shivering so hard she could barely tell me her name." I closed my eyes, remembering the little girl with dark hair and huge, frightened eyes curling into my waitress apron in the back booth. "I thought she was an runaway from the projects. I didn't know she was the heiress to the biggest crime syndicate in the state."
"You fed her warm soup, wrapped her in your coat, and sat with her for five hours while she slept," Marcus said softly. "My men had half the city turned upside down with guns drawn, ready to execute anyone who had touched her. When I walked into that diner, I expected to find a ransom demand. Instead, I found you singing an old lullaby to keep her calm."
"My mother's lullaby," I said, a tear slipping down my cheek before I could stop it. "The same one my father used to sing when the phone calls in the middle of the night made him pack our bags."
The sedan crested the span of the bridge, the industrial silhouette of the Brooklyn Navy Yard rising out of the gray waterfront below like a graveyard of rusted steel and shipping cranes.
"Marcus," I said, turning to him fully. "When this is over... if we get Elena out of that facility alive... what happens to you?"
"The Anvil is dead, Sarah. You killed it in Boston," he replied, steering the car down the off-ramp toward Flushing Avenue. "The federal warrants will hit my legitimate holdings by noon. If I don't give myself up to Agent Miller, they'll hunt me until I'm buried. But if Elena and Maya are safe... I have nothing left to fight them for."
"You're going to prison?" Panic flared in my chest. "After everything?"
"I’m going to pay the bill I ran up for ten years," Marcus said firmly. "The only thing that matters now is getting my wife out of that cold storage before the power grid dies."
May you like
He turned the sedan sharply into the gated entrance of Pier 12, smashing through a rusted padlock chain, the sedan bouncing over cracked rail tracks toward a nondescript, windowless concrete bunker perched at the edge of the dark, churning harbor.
***
