Chapter 9 - Brothers Reunited
The private chapel was freezing, smelling of burnt tallow, damp stone, and damp sea air leaking through the century-old masonry.
Clara Callahan stood before the altar, trembling violently.
Her torn scrubs had been forcibly replaced with a cheap, ill-fitting silk wedding gown that Cassian’s men had thrown into the room like an insult. Her bare feet were numb against the icy flagstones. A crooked, sweating county registrar sat at a small folding table beside the communion rail, his trembling hands shuffling three copies of a marriage certificate and a five-hundred-page commercial asset conveyance.
Cassian stood beside her, checking his pocket watch with a smug, irritated smirk. Two Russian mercenaries with Kalashnikovs stood flanking the heavy oak double doors, their fingers resting casually on the trigger guards.
"Sign the second document, Clara," Cassian said, his voice dripping with condescension. "You’ve already signed the marital registry. Don't make this difficult at the finish line."
Clara stared down at the crisp white paper. The heading read: Irrevocable Transfer of Controlling Voting Stock: Atlantic Marine & Callahan Holdings to Cassian Mercer.
"Where is my daughter?" Clara whispered, her lips blue from the cold. "You gave me your word. You said the moment I signed the marriage license, you’d let me hear Ivy's voice."
Cassian sighed, walking toward her with slow, deliberate footsteps. He reached out and caught her jaw in a bruising, iron grip, forcing her face up toward his.
"You really are remarkably naive for a medical professional," Cassian murmured, his dark eyes sparkling with sadistic amusement. "Did you honestly believe I’d let a seven-year-old child run around loose with your blood in her veins? A child who could grow up and challenge this conveyance in ten years?"
Clara’s heart stopped. The world seemed to drop out from underneath her feet. "What... what did you do to her?"
Cassian leaned in, his breath warm and sour against her ear. "The moment my driver called to confirm she was spotted outside that diner in Brooklyn, I told him not to bother with the trunk. A speeding truck in an alleyway looks so wonderfully accidental on a rainy night, don't you think?"
A scream tore from Clara’s throat—a primal, animalistic shriek of absolute devastation.
With all the strength left in her battered body, she drove the heavy chrome fountain pen directly into Cassian’s neck.
"Aaargh! You bitch!" Cassian roared, stumbling backward as the steel nib ripped a jagged gouge across his collarbone, splattering dark blood across the white silk of her dress.
He backhanded her across the face with savage force. The blow knocked Clara off her feet, sending her crashing into the altar rail. The heavy communion cross wobbled and fell, clattering against the stones.
"Pick her up!" Cassian bellowed, pressing a silk handkerchief to his bleeding neck. "Hold her down on the table! Break her fingers if you have to, but force her thumbprint onto the notary wax! Now!"
The two mercenaries lunged forward, grabbing Clara by her arms and slamming her face-down onto the cold wooden table. Clara fought like a madwoman, thrashing, kicking, and screaming her daughter's name into the empty air: "Ivy! IVY!"
"Shut her up!" Cassian snarled, drawing his snub-nosed revolver from his inner jacket. "We don't need her alive after the thumbprint anyway—"
Suddenly, the stained-glass window above the altar exploded inward in a cataclysmic shower of colored glass and lead framing.
The concussive boom of flashbang grenades shattered the air, instantly blinding the room in white phosphor.
Before the mercenaries could even blink through the blinding flare, the heavy oak doors of the chapel were blown off their iron hinges by commercial breaching charges, crashing flat onto the flagstones.
Through the drifting smoke and falling glass, a terrifying figure stepped into the sanctuary.
Andrew Mercer didn't yell. He didn't issue commands.
He simply fired.
Two suppressed rounds punched through the chest of the mercenary holding Clara’s right arm, dropping him instantly into a pool of spreading crimson. The second mercenary scrambled to bring his rifle around, but Marco’s sniper fire took him clean through the throat from the broken window above.
The registrar dove screaming beneath the folding table, soaking the marriage documents in spilled ink.
Cassian scrambled backward behind the marble altar, clutching his bleeding neck, his eyes wide with absolute horror as the smoke cleared.
Standing in the center aisle, soaked in rain, covered in broken glass, and holding an assault rifle aimed directly at his cousin's heart, was Andrew.
Beside Andrew, walking slowly with the help of a Mercer enforcer, was Daniel.
Daniel was wrapped in a heavy wool coat, his face pale as chalk, but his eyes were wide, clear, and burning with righteous fury.
Cassian pressed his back against the stone wall, his voice trembling in sheer, unadulterated disbelief. "D-Daniel? No... no! You’re brain-dead! You drowned nine years ago!"
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Daniel took a step forward, his voice hoarse, but carrying through the ruined church like a crack of thunder.
"I didn't drown, Cassian," Daniel whispered. "And I never forgot your face."
