Chapter 13 - A Mother’s Sin and a Judge’s Penance
The world was a kaleidoscope of wood splinters,
shouting,
and the rhythmic thud of a heavy machine gun.
I was pressed against the cold floorboards,
the smell of old wax and fresh blood filling my lungs.
Beside me,
Thorne was barking orders into a radio that was mostly static,
his face covered in dust.
Dominic had disappeared in the initial burst of fire,
diving behind the heavy oak bar.
The men outside didn't care about collateral damage;
they were clearing the room with surgical,
merciless precision.
This wasn't the syndicate.
This was something higher,
something deeper.
The "unseen hand" that Dominic had bragged about was finally showing itself,
and it was made of steel and lead.
"We have to move!"
Thorne shouted,
grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the kitchen.
"The walls won't hold!"
We scrambled through the service door just as the roof of the living room collapsed under a rocket-propelled grenade.
The heat was intense,
singeing the back of my neck.
I looked back and saw one of the tactical agents slumped over a table,
his life draining out into a puddle of spilled wine.
He was young,
barely older than Julian.
He had a family,
a life,
and he was dying in a forest because I had signed a warrant.
The guilt was a physical weight,
a crushing pressure on my chest.
Is this what justice looked like?
A trail of bodies and a burning house?
"Where’s Ward?"
I asked,
my voice raw.
"Forget him!"
Thorne yelled.
"We need to get to the extraction point!"
"No!"
I pulled away from him.
"If he dies here,
the truth dies with him!
The journals aren't enough!
We need the names he hasn't written down!"
I turned and ran back toward the smoke-filled ruins of the living room.
I could hear Thorne swearing behind me,
but I didn't stop.
I saw Dominic crawling through the debris,
his face bloody,
his expensive suit shredded.
He was reaching for a fallen pistol.
I got there first.
I kicked the gun away and pressed my foot into his chest,
the same way I had seen countless defendants treated in my court.
"Who are they,
Dominic?"
I hissed,
the smoke stinging my eyes.
"Who sent the helicopters?"
He looked up at me,
a jagged piece of glass embedded in his shoulder.
He coughed,
spraying blood onto the floor.
"The Board,"
he wheezed.
"The people...
who own the banks.
The people...
who own the wars.
I was just...
the middleman."
"Give me a name!"
I screamed,
the sound of the machine gun getting closer.
"Vanguard,"
he whispered.
"The Vanguard Group.
They...
they have the keys."
Before I could ask anything else,
the wall behind us exploded.
I was thrown forward,
my head hitting the edge of the bar.
Darkness threatened to pull me under,
but I fought it.
I saw a figure standing in the breach,
wearing a suit of high-tech armor,
their face hidden by a dark visor.
They didn't look at me.
They looked at Dominic.
They raised a weapon that looked like something out of a science fiction movie and fired a single,
silent bolt of energy.
Dominic didn't scream.
He simply ceased to exist.
Where he had been,
there was only a charred mark on the floor and a lingering smell of ozone.
The figure turned toward me,
and for a second,
I thought I was next.
But then,
a flashbang went off behind them.
Thorne was back,
firing his sidearm with desperate intensity.
The armored figure moved with impossible speed,
leaping back through the hole in the wall and vanishing into the trees.
Thorne grabbed me and literally carried me out of the building as the entire structure was engulfed in flames.
We reached the van just as the unmarked helicopters peeled away,
disappearing into the grey morning sky.
The silence that followed was more deafening than the gunfire.
I sat on the floor of the van,
staring at my hands.
Dominic was gone.
The man who had ruined my daughter,
who had threatened my son,
who had corrupted my city,
was nothing more than ash.
But there was no triumph.
There was only the word he had spoken.
Vanguard.
"He’s dead,"
Thorne said,
sitting down across from me,
his face a mask of exhaustion.
"We have nothing.
The journals will be called forgeries now that the primary source is gone.
The case is falling apart."
I looked at him,
the smoke in my lungs making my voice deep and gravelly.
"The case isn't falling apart,
Marcus.
The case just got much,
much bigger."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small digital recorder I had turned on before entering the cabin.
I pressed play.
Vanguard.
The Vanguard Group.
They have the keys.
"We have the name,"
I said.
"And now,
we’re going to find out who owns the keys to the world."
But as I looked out the window at the smoking ruins of the lodge,
I knew I had crossed a line I could never go back across.
I had watched a man be executed.
I had used illegal contacts.
I had put lives at risk for a name.
I was no longer Judge Victoria Sterling.
May you like
I was something else.
Something the law didn't have a name for.
