Chapter 285

[ 1,025 words ]

Julian’s POV

Zane didn’t flinch. He didn’t offer a corporate explanation, he didn’t try to defend his boundaries, and he certainly didn’t try to deny the accusation.

He shrugged.

He gave me a single, entirely unbothered look, turned on his heel, and walked out the door, leaving me alone in the quiet office with the rain hitting the glass and the ticking clock.

I reached for my desk.

The forty-eight hours were officially up. And the war was about to get very, very dirty.

The heavy double doors of my private office didn’t just close; they seemed to vibrate with the lingering echo of Sam’s rage.

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass, my eyes locked on the rain running down the pane, but I wasn’t seeing the Manhattan skyline. I was seeing Katia’s face. The split lip. The bruised cheek. The mental image of Jude Wolfe’s hand connecting violently with her skin made a hot, suffocating wave of pure, primitive madness surge through my chest.

He had touched her. He had put his heavy, abusive hands on my wife, and then he had used my son—my blood—to force her into silence.

The beast in my chest wasn’t just screaming anymore; it had gone completely silent, compressing its rage into a freezing focus.

Zane had walked out, shrugging, leaving me alone in the quiet office. I didn’t throw a corporate tantrum. I didn’t smash the crystal decanters on my desk. I slowly reached into my pocket, pulled out my encrypted black phone, and dialed a secure, unlisted number that bypassed the standard WEG security infrastructure entirely. This was the line for my personal shadow detail—military-grade contractors who handled high-risk asset protection and tactical containment.

“Windsor,” I rasped, my voice sounding like iron sliding over stone.

“Sir,” the voice on the other end answered instantly.

“Jude Wolfe,” I said, my breathing slow and deliberate. “He is currently leaving the NYPD precinct or heading back to his penthouse at the Whitmore. He has four personal British bodyguards. I want him neutralized and taken. No noise. No public footprint. Bring him to the Brooklyn shipyard warehouse p>

“Understood, sir. We are already tracking his convoy’s GPS. Execution will take less than twenty minutes p>

“Make it clean,” I commanded, and hung up.

I walked to my desk, picked up a roll of white medical tape, and slowly began wrapping my knuckles.

I took my time. The shhh-t of the tape tearing was the only sound inside the quiet office. I stretched the fabric tight over my skin, feeling the stiff, dry ache in my palms. My face had settled into a completely blank, frozen wall of stone. Jude Wolfe had played his games. He had used the law, the press, and my child to build a fortress around his fraud.

But he had forgotten that I don’t play by the rules of the corporate ledger when my territory is breached.

The private underground executive garage of the Whitmore Hotel was silent, smelling of damp concrete and expensive exhaust.

Jude’s four bodyguards stood near the idling silver Porsche and the backup black SUV, their postures relaxed, their hands in their pockets. They believed New York was a civilized market. They believed the NYPD “misunderstanding” statement had cleared the board, and they were preparing to escort their employer to a private airfield to escape back to London.

The service elevator clicked open.

Jude stepped out, his silk robe replaced by a dark, tailored three-piece suit, his head slightly tilted back to ease the throb of the cut at the base of his skull. Alistair walked beside him, holding his tablet, reviewing the flight plan.

“The jet is fueled and cleared for a ten-forty departure, sir,” Alistair said.

Before Jude could answer, the overhead halogen lights of the executive garage went pitch-black.

The sudden, absolute darkness was instantaneous, accompanied by the high-frequency hum of a portable signal jammer.

“Security!” Alistair shouted, his voice cracking with a sudden, sharp panic.

Jude’s bodyguards moved instantly, their hands reaching inside their jackets for their sidearms, but they were already blind. The Windsor tactical team didn’t use warning sirens, and they didn’t issue corporate commands. They moved through the dark with night-vision optics, silent, fast, and lethal.

The sharp thwip-thwip of suppressed pneumatic taser darts echoed in the concrete garage.

Two of Jude’s guards went down instantly, their bodies convulsing violently as fifty thousand volts of electricity seized their nervous systems. The third guard tried to draw his weapon, but a shadow materialized from the darkness behind him—a sweeping, heavy forearm strike to his throat that cut off his air, followed by a violent, close-quarters elbow to his temple that sent him crashing senselessly onto the concrete.

“Alistair!” Jude whistled through his wired jaw, his voice shaking as he stumbled back against the hood of the Porsche.

Alistair was already pinned against the wall, a heavy zip-tie locking his wrists behind his back, a gloved hand firmly covering his mouth to suppress his screams.

The fourth guard managed to clear his holster, but he never got the chance to aim. A tactical boot heel slammed into his knee, fracturing the joint with a sickening crack, and before he could yell, a heavy, gloved fist smashed into his jaw, knocking him unconscious before his body hit the oil-stained ground.

Jude turned to run back toward the service elevator, his hands clawing at the concrete wall for balance, but the doors were already blocked by a towering, dark silhouette.

He didn’t even see the hand that grabbed him.

A heavy, chemically treated cloth was pressed violently over his nose and mouth. Jude thrashed, his fingers scratching frantically at the tactical vest of the operator holding him, but the high-grade anesthetic did its work in seconds. His knees buckled, his good eye rolling back into his head as his hundred-and-ninety-pound frame went completely limp.

They pulled a dark, heavy utility bag over his head, loaded his senseless body into the back of a blacked-out transport van, and drove out of the garage before the hotel’s backup generators could even flicker back to life.

The entire extraction had taken exactly ninety-four seconds.

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