Chapter 8 - The Price of Silence
The cottage on Hibben Street was surrounded by blooming azaleas and sweetgrass baskets hanging from the front porch.
To anyone passing by, it was the picture of Southern serenity, but Damian saw the signs of violence before the van even came to a complete stop.
Tire marks scored deep into the damp front lawn, and the screen door hung crookedly from its upper hinge.
Damian killed the engine and drew his weapon in a single, fluid motion, motioning for Alara to stay low between the seats.
Alara refused, her jaw set in defiance as she slid out of the passenger side and followed closely behind him along the brick path.
The front door had been forced with a crowbar, the splintered oak jamb bearing the fresh marks of a heavy tool.
Inside, the scent of lavender soap was overpowered by the sharp, metallic tang of unspent gun grease.
Furniture had been flipped over, cushions were slashed open with utility knives, and centuries of family ceramics lay shattered across the heart-pine floors.
From the sunroom at the back of the house, a low, cruel laugh drifted through the wreckage.
Julian Keller, the board’s chief enforcer, stood over Clara Bennett’s wheelchair, toying with a vintage pearl necklace he had torn from her jewelry box.
Two armed operatives in dark windbreakers stood near the French doors, their weapons held at low ready.
Aunt Clara sat upright despite her trembling chin, her knuckles white as she gripped the armrests of her chair, refusing to give Keller the satisfaction of tears.
Keller was telling her that her stubbornness ran in the family, remarking that Thomas had possessed the exact same irritating spine right up until his fatal dose.
Damian breached the doorway before the sentence could even land, moving with terrifying, predatory precision.
Two suppressed gunshots cracked through the living room like the snapping of dry timber.
The two armed men collapsed to the hardwood floor before their fingers could even tighten on their triggers.
Keller spun around with his pistol raised, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief at the sight of the supposedly dead mafia kingpin.
Damian closed the gap instantly, striking Keller’s wrist with the barrel of his weapon to disarm him, followed by a concussive blow that drove the enforcer into the wall.
Plaster shattered under the impact as Keller slid to the floor, gasping for breath while Damian pinned him by the throat with his boot.
Alara rushed past them, dropping to her knees beside her aunt’s wheelchair and throwing her arms around the trembling older woman.
Clara wept softly into her niece’s hair, whispering that they had torn the house apart looking for the iron box in the attic.
She pulled a small silver locket from beneath her blouse and pressed it into Alara’s hand, murmuring that Thomas had made her swear never to surrender it to anyone but his daughter.
Inside the locket was a microscopic memory card, sealed beneath a piece of blue velvet.
On the floor, Keller spat blood onto his jacket, laughing wheezily as he looked up into Damian’s stone-cold eyes.
He wheezed that killing him changed nothing, because Marcus Vance had already transferred eighty million dollars through the port’s shipping authority that morning.
He boasted that by midnight, the entire Cross empire would be formally signed over to Vance’s consortium at the annual Harbor Gala at the customs house.
Damian leaned down until his lips were inches from Keller’s ear, his voice dropping into a deadly, freezing whisper.
He told Keller that dead men did not attend galas, which made them remarkably difficult to stop when they walked through the front door.
Damian struck the enforcer across the temple with the butt of his weapon, rendering him instantly unconscious.
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He turned to Alara, who stood holding the memory card with absolute clarity in her eyes.
They loaded Clara into the back of the utility van along with her essential medication, knowing that the final confrontation would not take place in the shadows of the marsh, but beneath the crystal chandeliers of Charleston’s most elite society.
