Divorced on Monday, Bought the City on Tuesday: The Infinite

The Cost of Arrogance

Chapter 16

The underground parking garage of the Blackwood Estate was a cavern of damp concrete and luxury vehicles. Silas Thorne leaned against the hood of his armored Mercedes-Maybach, chewing furiously on a cigar. He was flanked by six men elite enforcers of the Thorne Syndicate, all heavily armed and ex-military.

"I don't care if he has a billion dollars," Silas snarled, checking the slide of his customized Glock 19. "Money doesn't stop bullets. When this 'Vance' guy walks out of that elevator, I want his kneecaps blown off. Bring him to me alive. I’m going to make him drink that serum from the pavement."

The enforcers nodded, fanning out into tactical positions around the elevator banks.

Ding.

Silas raised his gun, a cruel, anticipatory grin spreading across his face. The steel doors slid open.

But Arthur Vance didn't step out.

Instead, a solitary woman emerged. She wore a tailored charcoal suit, her stark white hair catching the dim fluorescent lights of the garage. Her crimson eyes swept the room, entirely devoid of fear. She carried a sleek, high-density black combat briefcase in one hand.

Silas lowered his gun slightly, frowning. "Where is he? Where is the billionaire?"

Vera didn't answer. She continued walking forward, her high heels clicking rhythmically against the concrete. Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

"Stop right there, bitch," the lead enforcer barked, raising an assault rifle and aiming it squarely at Vera’s chest. "Where is your boss?"

Vera paused. She looked at the enforcer, then at Silas. "Master Vance is currently completing the transaction for his purchase. He sent me ahead to prepare his vehicle... and to deliver a message to Mr. Thorne."

Silas let out a harsh laugh, flicking his cigar onto the concrete. "A message? Let me guess, he wants to apologize? He wants to offer me the serum? Too late. Kill her and breach the elevator."

The lead enforcer didn't hesitate. He squeezed the trigger.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Three rounds of 5.56mm armor-piercing ammunition struck Vera directly in the center of her chest.

Silas grinned, expecting her to drop. Instead, his grin froze, slowly mutating into a mask of utter horror.

Vera barely flinched. The bullets tore through the fabric of her tailored suit, but the moment they struck her skin, they flattened against her subdermal carbon-weave tissue with a sickening ping, dropping harmlessly to the floor like discarded pebbles.

She looked down at the ruined silk of her shirt.

"That was a bespoke suit," Vera whispered. Her crimson eyes flared with predatory rage.

Before the enforcer could comprehend what had just happened, Vera vanished.

She moved with a speed that defied biological physics. In a fraction of a second, she was standing directly in front of the lead enforcer. She didn't use a weapon. She simply drove the heel of her palm upward, striking the underside of his jaw. The kinetic force shattered his mandible and launched his two-hundred-pound body backward through the air, crashing violently into the windshield of a nearby Porsche.

"Fire! Fire!" Silas screamed, scrambling backward in sheer panic.

The remaining five enforcers opened fire, filling the concrete garage with deafening, echoing gunfire. But Vera was a phantom. She weaved through the hail of bullets, her movements mathematically perfect. She disarmed the second man, breaking his arm in three places, and used his body as a shield while she threw a titanium throwing knife that buried itself to the hilt in the third man's shoulder.

In less than ten seconds, Silas’s elite security detail was a groaning, bleeding pile of broken bones on the damp concrete.

Silas stood alone, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold his Glock. He fired wildly, but the slide clicked back. Empty.

Vera walked slowly toward him, stepping over a puddle of blood.

"Wait! Wait!" Silas shrieked, backing up until his spine hit the door of his Maybach. "Do you know who my father is?! I am a Thorne! If you touch me, the Syndicate will hunt you to the ends of the earth!"

Vera didn't speak. She reached out, gripping Silas by the lapels of his jacket, and effortlessly lifted him off his feet. She slammed him down onto the hood of his own car.

Before Silas could scream again, Vera raised her leg and brought her heel down directly onto Silas’s right kneecap with the force of a hydraulic press.

SNAP.

The sound of the joint completely shattering echoed through the garage, immediately followed by Silas’s agonizing, ear-piercing scream.

Vera wasn't finished. Master Vance had explicitly said legs. Plural.

She brought her heel down on the left knee. SNAP.

Silas’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he mercifully passed out from the explosive trauma.

Just as Silas went limp, the VIP elevator doors chimed and opened again. Arthur Vance stepped out, a calm, detached expression on his face. He held the glowing blue cylinder of the Leviathan Marrow Serum in his left hand.

He walked over to the Maybach, looking down at the unconscious, broken heir of the Thorne Syndicate.

"Messy," Arthur noted, looking at Vera's ruined shirt.

"My apologies, Master," Vera bowed smoothly, completely ignoring the carnage around her. "They lacked manners."

"It's fine. Buy another suit on the company card," Arthur said, stepping over a groaning enforcer. He looked at Silas’s ruined legs. "Let's go home. I have a drink to catch up on."