Chapter 9 - The Final Ambush
Vance did not board the freighter.
A cornered rat does not sail away into the night; it bites.
As Marcus turned his back to walk toward the Rolls-Royce, Vance’s nerve broke completely. Screaming a curse that tore through the fog, he dove toward the steel table, drawing a concealed Glock from his ankle holster.
"Marcus!" Clare screamed.
Everything slowed to the glacial, terrifying count of a waltz.
Dominic fired from the car, his round catching Vance in the shoulder, but the momentum carried Vance forward. His weapon was raised, pointing directly at the small of Marcus’s back.
Clare did not think. She did not freeze. She did not run.
Five years of being told she was weak, three weeks of being hunted like an animal, and forty-eight hours of holding Marcus Vale’s hand culminated in a single, explosive instant of instinct.
Clare lunged forward.
Her dancer’s footwork—honed by twenty years of leaps, turns, and lightning-fast shifts in balance—carried her across the wet, slippery concrete in half a second. She slammed her heavy leather handbag directly into Vance’s wrist just as he squeezed the trigger.
The gunshot roared like thunder in the enclosed pier.
The bullet tore wildly into the wooden pilings, sending a shower of wet splinters into the dark water below. Vance snarled, swinging his left arm around to backhand her, but Clare was already moving. She dropped low, sweeping her foot across Vance’s uninjured leg, throwing him entirely off balance onto the slick concrete.
Before Vance could recover, a black boot descended upon his wrist with a sickening *crack*.
Vance screamed in agony as the gun slipped from his shattered fingers.
Marcus stood over him.
The silver-haired man looked like an archangel of death. Without a word, Marcus drew his own weapon, the heavy steel gleaming in the halogen glare.
"Marcus, don't!" Clare cried out, her breath ragged, her hands scraping against the wet concrete as she pushed herself up.
Marcus paused, the gun leveled squarely between Vance’s eyes. His chest was heaving with an uncharacteristic, terrifying fury. His gray eyes were entirely black with adrenaline.
"He tried to kill you, Clare," Marcus rasped, his finger tightening on the trigger. "He almost took you from me."
"Don't do it for him," Clare said, stepping into his line of sight, her hand coming up to touch his forearm. Her touch was gentle, grounding, the only soft thing in an ocean of iron and blood. "You promised me he wasn't worth the bullet. Let the law take him. The state attorney has the files. Let him rot in a concrete box for thirty years knowing he lost everything to an old man and a dance teacher."
Marcus looked from Vance’s sobbing, broken form up to Clare’s face.
He saw the soot beneath her nails, the blood on her knuckles from where she had struck Vance, and the fierce, unyielding pride blazing in her dark eyes. She wasn't asking him to be weak. She was commanding him to be greater than the dirt at his feet.
Marcus slowly lowered the hammer of the revolver.
"Dominic," Marcus said, his voice returning to that icy, terrifying calm.
"Sir?"
"Call the federal marshal. Tell him Lorenzo Vance is gift-wrapped at Berth 4 with two broken limbs and a full confession in his pocket."
"Right away, boss."
Marcus holstered his weapon, then turned to Clare. He didn't care that his lieutenants were watching from the catwalks. He didn't care that Dominic was dialing the feds. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her off her feet, burying his face into the curve of her neck as if she were the only real thing in a world of ghosts.
"You are insane," he murmured, his voice trembling with a raw, terrifying wonder. "You tackled an armed man on a wet pier."
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"I told you, Marcus," she whispered against his collar, her arms locking tight around his neck. "Age is just tempo. And I’m not letting anyone interrupt our dance."
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