"He Knocked a Waitress Unconscious in Front of Everyone—Then the Mafia Boss Stood Up and Locked the Doors / Chapter 45 / 60

Chapter 45 - The Mother’s Reckoning

We surfaced in the dark, oil-slicked waters of Ballast Tank Three. Silas threw off his rebreather, catching his breath silently before reaching down to haul me onto the rusted catwalk.

The air inside the ship smelled of ancient grease, burning diesel, and ozone.

"We are three decks below the command bridge," Silas whispered, wiping saltwater from his tactical goggles. "Communication is blacked out. If Arthur detects our comm signals, he will know we didn't come to talk."

We moved through the labyrinthine corridors with practiced lethal silence. Silas moved like a phantom—every corner cleared with precision, every shadow used as a cloak. Two Consortium guards rounded the bend of the primary engineering deck, their heavy rifles slung loosely over their shoulders.

Before they could even register the droplets of saltwater falling from Silas’s combat gear, he was upon them.

His blade slipped between the plates of the first guard’s collarbone with a sickening crunch. As the second man stumbled back, bringing his weapon up, I stepped from behind the bulkhead, my suppressed pistol coughing twice. Both rounds punched through his throat. Silas caught the falling body before it hit the steel grating, lowering it without a whisper of sound.

"Good shot," Silas murmured, his eyes scanning the security monitors mounted above the hatch.

"I told you," I whispered back, swapping out a fresh magazine. "Don't mess with a mother."

We climbed the vertical maintenance ladders, ascending through the belly of the warship. As we neared Deck One, a sound drifted down through the ventilation ducts.

It was a small, frightened sob, followed by a child’s trembling voice singing a nursery rhyme—the very song I sang to Clara every night before tucking her into bed at the safehouse.

*“Twinkle, twinkle, little star...”*

My heart shattered, then hardened into solid tungsten. Clara was awake. And she was terrified.

Silas grabbed my arm, his grip bruising. His eyes burned with an animalistic fury that transcended anything I had ever seen in him. "The observation deck is just beyond those double blast doors. My father is in there. Stay behind my shield on the breach."