Chapter 8 - The Ghost Ships of Lake Michigan
The arrests at Pier 42 broke the back of the Doyle syndicate, but the true nightmare lay three hundred yards out in the dark, churning waters of Berth Nine.
While the FBI secured Arthur Doyle and Evelyn Cross, the alarm horns began to wail across the harbor. High above the water, smoke began to billow from the vents of the *Scylla*, a rusted, five-hundred-foot Panamanian-flagged freighter that had been sitting dark in the slip for two weeks.
“They’re scuttling the ship!” Lev shouted, running to Roman’s side as sirens echoed across the water. “Moretti didn't flee the state! He’s on that boat! He’s torching the cargo hold to destroy the manifests!”
Roman’s face turned to stone. “Sadie, get in the federal transport. Now.”
“No,” Sadie said, grabbing his arm. “The paper records for the St. Jude shell corporation are on that bridge, Roman! The offshore bank tokens are physical hardware—if Moretti burns that ship, the link to the medical fraud dies with him! All the restitution for the families—for my mother—it turns to ash!”
Roman looked at the burning freighter, then at the fierce, unyielding light in Sadie’s eyes. He knew that look. It was the same look she had worn in the diner when she chose to jump between him and a bullet.
“Lev!” Roman barked. “Get the boarding launch! Miss Carter is coming with us!”
The crossing took less than three minutes across the black, wind-whipped waves. The launch slammed against the rusted steel hull of the *Scylla*, and Roman’s men threw boarding ladders up to the gangway.
The heat radiating from the freighter was suffocating. Thick, acrid smoke smelling of burning plastics and diesel fuel poured from the vents.
Sadie climbed the ladder right behind Roman, the cold spray of the lake stinging her cuts, her grip tight on the steel rungs. When they hit the deck, the world was fire and iron.
Gunfire echoed from the upper deck. Roman drew his weapon, moving with lethal precision through the smoke-filled companionways. Lev and his men swept through the crew quarters, engaging Moretti’s remaining die-hard mercenaries in short, brutal firefights that ended in screams and silence.
“The bridge!” Sadie shouted, coughing through the smoke as she pointed toward the forward superstructure.
Roman kicked open the heavy watertight door leading to the wheelhouse.
Inside, the room was glowing with orange fire. A steel desk was piled with burning documents, and standing over it with an open flare gun was Julian Moretti.
His face was streaked with soot, his eyes wild with the madness of a man who knew his empire had already turned to dust.
“Vale!” Moretti roared over the howling wind outside. “You want the files? Come get them in hell!”
Moretti leveled the flare gun straight at Sadie’s chest.
Before the trigger could be pulled, Roman threw himself across the room. The impact was sickening—Roman’s shoulder slammed into Moretti, driving the larger man back against the shattered bridge windows.
The flare gun discharged into the ceiling, raining magnesium sparks across the deck.
Moretti drew a combat knife, slashing wildly. The blade caught Roman across his injured ribs, reopening the wound with a spray of blood that splattered the glass. Roman grunted, his knees buckling for a split second under the agony, but he didn't fall.
He locked his hands around Moretti’s wrist, twisting the bone until a sharp crack echoed over the roar of the fire. The knife clattered to the deck.
“You killed innocent people for profit,” Roman growled, his voice a low, terrifying rumble as he forced Moretti back over the broken window sill, suspended two hundred feet above the icy, black waters of the lake. “You stole from dying women.”
“Roman, wait!” Sadie’s voice broke through the fury.
Roman froze. He looked back at her.
Sadie was standing beside the burning desk, her coat scorched, her hands blistered, but in her grip was a heavy, fireproof steel strongbox stamped with the crest of the First Zurich Bank.
“I have it,” she said, her voice shaking but clear. “I have the master ledgers. The encrypted tokens. Everything. Don't throw your life away for him. He’s already dead.”
Moretti looked down at the dark, freezing void beneath him, then back at Roman’s stone-cold eyes.
For three agonizing seconds, Roman held the mobster suspended over eternity.
Then, with a disgusted shove, Roman threw Moretti back onto the steel deck of the wheelhouse, right at the feet of the federal agents who had just breached the door.
“Book him,” Roman said, not looking down as the agents dragged the screaming, broken crime boss away in zip-ties.
The freighter groaned beneath them, the scuttling charges taking effect as the stern began to list heavily into the water.
“We have to go!” Lev yelled from the stairwell. “The boat is going down!”
Roman turned to Sadie. He was bleeding heavily again, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his clothes soaked in sweat and ash. But as he reached for her hand, his touch was as steady as a mountain.
“Did you get what you needed?” he asked softly.
Sadie looked down at the steel box, then up into the eyes of the man who had risked his life, his empire, and his blood to stand beside her.
“I got everything,” she whispered.
May you like
He pulled her into his arms, shielding her with his body as the bridge windows shattered from the heat, and together they ran through the smoke toward the waiting launch.
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