Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22: THE APEX PREDATOR
"Fall back! Fall back to the secondary exit!" Marcus roared, layout down a wall of suppressive fire toward the sparking door.
The steel door collapsed outward with a deafening crash. Through the smoke strode a man who looked completely out of place in a rusted Mexican foundry. He wore a perfectly tailored charcoal-gray three-piece suit, an expensive silk tie, and a pair of matte-black tactical night-vision goggles pushed up on his forehead. He was in his early forties, handsome in a terrifyingly cold way, with a jagged scar running from his left cheekbone down to his collar.
He didn't hold a rifle. He carried only a heavy gold-plated cane, which he tapped lightly against the concrete floor.
Behind him, a dozen elite mercenaries clad in unmarked grey combat gear moved with terrifying, fluid precision, systematically neutralizing Isabella’s remaining forces in seconds.
"Ricardo," the man in the suit spoke, his voice an elegant, British-accented purr that completely filled the cavernous room. "Thirty years you’ve been running Grupo Salazar as if it belonged to you. Did you really think we wouldn't notice when you started using our shipping corridors to settle a petty domestic dispute with the Rivas family?"
My father stepped in front of me and Leo, his revolver raised, though his hand was slightly trembling. "Julian Rivas was the one who broke the treaty, Arthur. He tried to steal my grandson."
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The man named Arthur let out a soft, aristocratic sigh. "Julian Rivas was a middleman. An accountant with delusions of grandeur. We allowed him to exist because his family name shielded our Atlantic routes. But now? The Rivas name is a liability. And you, Ricardo... you have become too loud."
Arthur’s eyes shifted, locking onto me through the darkness. "And this must be Valeria. The little schoolteacher who plays at being an empress."
