THE BENT PEN

The sound of the gunshot ripped through the fog like thunder.

Elias felt the impact before he heard the noise. A sledgehammer blow to his right side, just beneath his ribs. The kinetic force spun him violently, knocking the breath from his lungs and sending him crashing to the wet concrete of the pier.

The black ledger slipped from his fingers, landing in a puddle of dirty water.

"Boss!" Marcus roared, raising his assault rifle.

Chaos erupted.

The Volkov enforcers, realizing Silas had betrayed them all, didn't fire at Elias’s men. They turned their weapons on Silas. Silas’s personal mercenaries returned fire. The pier instantly transformed into a deafening, strobe-lit war zone of muzzle flashes and shattered metal.

Nakia screamed from the catwalk, scrambling down the rusted iron stairs as bullets pinged against the metal railing around her.

Elias lay on his back, staring up at the foggy night sky. A cold numbness was spreading rapidly from his abdomen, warring with a sharp, burning agony that spiked with every breath. He pressed his hand against his side. When he pulled it away, his fingers were slick with dark blood.

He was bleeding out. Fast.

"Elias!"

Nakia slid to her knees beside him on the wet concrete, ignoring the firefight raging thirty yards away. Her hands were shaking violently as she pressed them over his wound, pushing down with all her weight to staunch the bleeding.

"You idiot!" she sobbed, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face. "Why did you jump in front of it? You were safe!"

"You were... exposed," Elias grunted, his teeth gritted in pain. His icy blue eyes fluttered, fighting the darkness encroaching on the edges of his vision. "Told you... stay at the apartment."

"I don't take orders well," Nakia cried, pressing harder. "Stay awake, Elias! Look at me!"

Through the smoke and the chaos, a figure stumbled out of the shadows.

It was Silas.

He had taken a bullet to the shoulder, his expensive suit ruined, his face twisted in a mask of pure, feral desperation. He was clutching his handgun, limping toward them. He didn't care about the territory anymore. He didn't care about the empire. He only wanted the man who had taken it all away from him dead.

Marcus was pinned down behind a shipping container, exchanging heavy fire with Silas’s remaining mercenaries, unable to see his boss.

"Well, well," Silas spat, coughing blood as he stood over Elias and Nakia. He aimed the gun directly at Nakia’s head. "Isn't this romantic. The king dies in the mud, holding hands with the maid."

Elias tried to push himself up, trying to reach his own weapon, but his body refused to obey. The blood loss was too great.

"Leave her alone, Silas," Elias rasped, his voice weak. "This is between us."

"Not anymore," Silas smiled cruelly. He cocked the hammer. "Say hi to Maya for me."

Nakia didn't scream. She didn't cower. The fear that had paralyzed her in the restaurant and the flooded basement vanished, replaced by a white-hot, blinding fury. This was the man who had murdered her sister. The man who had tried to drown her nephew. The man who had just shot the only person who had ever truly protected her.

As Silas’s finger tightened on the trigger, Nakia moved.

She didn't try to run. She lunged forward, grabbing the heavy, solid gold fountain pen Elias had used to pry open the grate—the pen she had shoved into her own pocket back in the rail yard.

With a feral cry, Nakia drove the sharp, jagged metal point of the bent pen directly into Silas’s thigh, plunging it deep into the femoral artery.

Silas shrieked, the gun firing wildly into the air as his leg buckled. He collapsed onto the concrete, dropping the weapon, his hands frantically clawing at his leg as blood sprayed out in rhythmic, pulsing bursts.

Nakia scrambled backward, gasping for air, staring in shock at what she had just done.

Silas convulsed on the ground, the life draining out of him in seconds. The man who had orchestrated a war died not in a blaze of glory, but bleeding out on a dirty pier, bested by a housekeeper with a broken pen.

Suddenly, the wail of police sirens pierced the night, growing rapidly louder. Dozens of red and blue lights began flashing through the fog at the entrance to the docks. The Volkovs and the mercenaries scattered, fleeing into the shadows.

Marcus ran out from behind the containers, dropping his rifle. He slid next to Elias, his hands replacing Nakia’s over the wound.

"Ambulance is two minutes out, Boss," Marcus said, his voice tight with panic.

Elias looked at Nakia. Her hands were covered in blood. She was shaking, staring at Silas’s lifeless body.

Elias reached out, his bloody fingers wrapping weakly around her wrist.

"Nakia," he whispered, his voice fading.

She snapped out of her shock, turning back to him, grabbing his hand with both of hers. "I'm here. I'm right here. The ambulance is coming, Elias. Just hold on."

"The ring..." Elias breathed, his eyes losing focus.

"I have it," she sobbed, pressing his hand to her cheek. "I have it. But you're going to use it. You're going to survive."

"Clean money," Elias whispered, a faint, ghost of a smile touching his lips. "Take Leo... go to the house in Carmel... leave Chicago..."

"I'm not going anywhere without you!" she yelled at him, refusing to accept the finality in his tone. "You don't get to die on me, Elias Mercer! That is not an instruction, that is a fact!"

Elias looked at her, truly looked at her. The fierce, beautiful, stubborn woman who had broken into his cold, controlled life and made him feel alive again.

"Normal people... don't use... filing cabinets," Elias whispered.

His eyes rolled back, and his head lolled to the side.