Chapter 17 - The Wrath of the Cain Family
Thirty seconds after the ambush, Silvano dragged himself upright against the damp brick wall.
Blood streamed down his temple, blinding his left eye, but his hands were steady as he brought his tactical radio to his lips.
"Boss," Silvano wheezed, his voice choked with smoke and agony.
"They took her.
Mercer...
it was Julian Mercer.
They had a delivery truck.
She's gone."
Inside the private seventh-floor room at Tulane Medical Center, Rafferty Cain stood completely still by Josie’s bedside.
The radio call hung in the air like poison.
The two guards stationed inside the room instinctively took a step back.
Rafferty did not roar.
He did not smash the furniture.
A terrifying, unnatural stillness settled over his entire body.
His gray eyes turned into pools of absolute, cosmic zero.
The air in the room grew so dense that the monitors seemed to slow their beeping.
He walked over to Josie’s bed, pulled the blanket up to her chin, and kissed her forehead with gentle reverence.
"Watch her," Rafferty whispered to Dr. Vance and the head nurse.
"If a single stranger steps onto this floor, kill them."
"Yes, Mr. Cain," Dr. Vance whispered, terrified by the sheer demonic fury radiating from the man.
Rafferty walked out of the hospital suite.
Within five minutes, the entire underworld infrastructure of southern Louisiana ignited like a powder keg.
Fifty black vehicles mobilized across Orleans Parish.
Every harbor exit, every highway ramp, every bayou bridge was sealed tight by Cain enforcers armed with military-grade rifles.
Rafferty sat in the back of his armored command car, his phone pressed to his ear.
"Find them, Silvano," Rafferty ordered, his voice chillingly calm.
"Check every property Mercer ever used.
Check every contact Celeste Vanderpool had in her phone before she was evicted."
"We got a hit, Boss," Silvano’s voice crackled through the speaker.
The lieutenant was already in a chase car, his head roughly bandaged.
"A cell tower ping on an unregistered burner phone twenty minutes ago.
The coordinates trace to the old Domino Sugar refinery down in Chalmette on the riverbank.
It's abandoned.
Owned by a Vanderpool shell company."
Rafferty hung up the phone.
He racked the slide of his custom .45 caliber pistol, the heavy steel clicking into battery with a sharp, lethal snap.
"Chalmette," Rafferty told his driver.
"Drive like the devil is chasing you."
Ten miles downriver, inside the cavernous, rusting ruins of the Chalmette Sugar Refinery, rain leaked through broken skylights, drumming against abandoned conveyor belts and rusted iron vats.
Fay Delacroix regained consciousness.
Her head throbbed violently, her mouth dry and bitter from the chloroform.
She found herself tied securely to a wooden support column in the center of the vast, shadowy warehouse.
Standing ten feet in front of her, holding a silver revolver with trembling, hysterical hands, was Celeste Vanderpool.
"Look at you," Celeste sneered, her voice echoing off the corrugated metal walls.
"The grand lady of the Cain estate.
Back where you belong—tied up like trash."
Fay pulled against the rough hemp ropes, her wrists burning as the fibers bit into her skin.
She looked at Celeste, refusing to show a single shred of fear.
"You are insane, Celeste," Fay said, her voice hoarse but steady.
"Rafferty will find you.
And there is nowhere on this earth you can hide from him."
"He won't find me!" Celeste shrieked, waving the gun wildly.
"Because by the time he figures out where you are, you will be floating down the Mississippi with a bullet in your chest.
And I will be on a boat to South America with my diamonds."
Behind the rusted machinery, the heavy wooden doors of the refinery suddenly exploded inward.
A black SUV smashed straight through the barricade, sending splintered timber and twisted metal flying across the concrete floor.
Julian Mercer raised his shotgun, aiming at the driver’s side window, but before he could pull the trigger, three rifle shots cracked through the gloom.
Mercer’s chest erupted in red mist.
He collapsed backward into an empty iron vat, dead before his body struck the steel.
The headlights of the SUV bathed the center of the refinery in blinding white illumination.
From the driver’s door stepped Rafferty Cain.
He held a pistol in his right hand, his black coat billowing in the draft, walking forward with the unstoppable, terrifying momentum of an avalanche.
Celeste panicked.
She lunged toward Fay, wrapping her left arm around Fay’s throat and pressing the barrel of her revolver against Fay’s temple.
"Stay back!" Celeste screamed, her voice cracking with pure hysteria.
"Stay back, Rafferty, or I swear to God I'll blow her brains out!"
Rafferty stopped twenty feet away.
The headlights behind him cast his towering shadow across the concrete floor, swallowing both women in darkness.
He looked past Celeste’s trembling gun, straight into Fay’s pale gray eyes.
"Are you hurt, Fay?" Rafferty asked, his voice astonishingly calm and gentle.
"I'm fine, Rafferty," Fay replied, her voice unwavering.
"Don't let her touch my daughter."
"No one will ever touch your daughter again," Rafferty promised.
Then, his gaze shifted to Celeste.
The gentleness vanished, replaced by a gaze so devoid of humanity that Celeste physically shuddered.
"Drop the weapon, Celeste," Rafferty said softly.
"No!
You ruined me!" Celeste wept, her finger tightening on the trigger.
"You chose this maid over me!
You threw away twelve million dollars for a beggar!"
"I didn't choose a maid," Rafferty said, taking one slow, deliberate step forward.
"I chose the only woman who ever saw my soul.
And you are standing between me and my life."
Before Celeste’s hysterical brain could process his words, Rafferty raised his arm with blinding, inhuman speed.
A single shot echoed like thunder through the refinery.
The bullet struck the cylinder of Celeste’s revolver with pinpoint precision, shattering the steel and tearing the weapon from her grip in an explosion of sparks and shattered brass.
Celeste screamed, clutching her bloodied, broken fingers, and collapsed to her knees on the cold concrete.
Rafferty didn't spare her a second glance.
He rushed forward, pulling a knife from his belt and slicing through the ropes binding Fay to the post.
The moment the cords fell away, Fay collapsed into his arms.
Rafferty pulled her tight against his chest, burying his face in her hair, his powerful frame trembling with the sheer, terrifying intensity of his relief.
"I have you," he whispered, his voice breaking.
"I have you, my love.
You are safe."
Silvano stepped through the shattered doorway, accompanied by four armed guards.
He looked down at Celeste, who was sobbing and clutching her ruined hand on the floor.
"What do we do with her, Boss?" Silvano asked grimly.
Rafferty lifted Fay into his arms, carrying her toward the warmth of the SUV.
He paused at the door, glancing back over his shoulder at the weeping heiress.
"Hand her over to the federal marshals in New Orleans," Rafferty commanded, his tone colder than the winter river.
May you like
"Tell them she was an accomplice in her father's arms-smuggling ring.
Let her spend the next thirty years kneeling on the concrete floor of a federal penitentiary."
