Chapter 23 - The Siege at the Warehouse
The front steel roll-up door rattled violently as a vehicle rammed the exterior barrier. Heavy metal groaned under the impact, dust and flakes of rust cascading down from the ceiling girders.
“Julian!” Evelyn shouted.
Julian pulled a tactical shotgun from beneath the office floorboard—a relic stored during the building’s former private security operations. “The back exit leads directly to the shipping canal. There’s an old maintenance barge tied to the dock. If you can get Celeste onto that barge, you can cross the inlet to the public ferry terminal.”
“I’m not leaving you here,” Evelyn said, grabbing his arm.
“Julian Vance doesn't die in an abandoned Newark warehouse,” Julian said, racking the slide with a decisive, metallic clatter. “Patricia’s men won't shoot me. My family’s board members are waiting outside that door. If I walk out there with Marcus’s original ledger held in the air on a live stream, they will tear each other apart to avoid prison.”
He turned to Celeste, his gaze merciless. “You pushed her once, Celeste. If you let her fall tonight, I will spend every dollar of my inheritance ensuring you spend the rest of your life in solitary confinement. Get her to the canal.”
Celeste nodded furiously, grabbing Evelyn’s arm with genuine desperation. “Come on, Evie. There’s an emergency staircase behind the generator room.”
As the front doors buckled inward with a thunderous roar of splintering steel, Julian stepped out into the main corridor, raising his phone high, the camera flashing red as a global satellite uplink connected to four national news networks simultaneously.
May you like
“Good evening, gentlemen,” Julian’s voice echoed across the cavernous room, steady as iron. “My name is Julian Vance, and I am broadcasting live with the unsealed financial ledgers of Vance-Sterling Capital.”
Gunshots shattered the interior lights, plunging the warehouse into strobing darkness as Evelyn and Celeste plunged down the rear iron fire escape toward the black, churning water below.
