The Northern King's Vendetta

Chapter 2: Blood and Debt

Back in City B, the air in Aunt Elena’s crowded living room was heavy with the scent of copper and old smoke, and three men in leather jackets hovered over Elena as she lay shattered on the ground. One of the men, a towering goon with a jagged scar crossing his knuckles named Miller, kicked a broken wooden chair out of his path and smirked on looking down on her, the yellowing teeth beneath the smirk were evident, and he bent down to exhale smoke in her face.

​"You really are a special kind of stupid, Elena, because you could be living in a palace with Marcus Vance and eating with your fingers off glittering from China instead of being a hero and stashing those two monstrous children in this rat hole," Miller said as he tapped the ash of his cigarette into the carpet, "and now look at you, sprawled on a floor that hasn't seen a mop in over four weeks while your legs are bent in ways they should never be."

Elena coughed, spitting a mixture of saliva and blood on his boot, and her eyes lit with no lesser fire when she met his gaze​​ and when she finally spoke her voice was a raspy growl.

“Marcus is a coward who sold his soul to a snake, and I would rather die in the dirt than accept a single cent from a woman like Isabella Sterling, so you can tell her she didn’t break us for ten years, and she won’t start today,” Elena said, though her voice caught as she tried to shift her weight.

​The men laughed uproariously, the sound bouncing off the thin walls of the house, and a shorter, broader man holding a heavy wooden club stepped forward and began to tap it rhythmically against his palm. “You talk big for a woman who can’t even stand up, but you might want to stop worrying about Isabella and start worrying about what’s next for you, because your niece Mia is en route to the Gilded Cage auction,” the shorter man said with a cruel grin, “and by the time the sun sets, she’ll be owned by the man with the fattest wallet in the city, so your sacrifice for love didn’t actually help anyone.”

Elena’s face paled and she attempted to lunge at him, but her legs that were broken gave way instantly, sending a new wave of pain through her body that caused her to gasp for air, and she could only watch as the men circled her like vultures.

“We’ve got time to kill, and Isabella said we could play around as long as we found your nephew, so here’s the deal, Elena,” Miller said, tightening his grip on his club, “You give us the location of that boy, and I’ll put a bullet in your head right now so you don't have to experience us smashing the rest of your bones— or we can start with your arms, and work our way to your ribs, one by one.”

“I don’t know where he is, and if I did, he’s the one who’s going to come back and bury each and every one of you,” Elena spat back, but she was interrupted by the sound of the front door being torn off its hinges with such an impact that it rattled the entire house.

Caleb Vance came out of the dust and debris, the harsh daylight silhouetting him, and his gaze was immediately drawn to Elena lying on the ground, and with that a heavy silence settled in in the room not unlike the afternoon heat.

“I don’t think she needs to tell you where I am, since I’m right here.” Caleb’s voice was a flat, dangerous monotone that did not match the absolute fury in his eyes.

The kidnappers stared, and alarmed for yet another moment, Miller even lowered his club as he studied Caleb up and down, seeing the dirt-streaked military fatigues and the unflinching hands of the younger man despite being so clearly outnumbered.

The “Well, look at that, the lost sheep just walked right into the slaughterhouse, and I thought we were going to have to get up and go find you” Miller said as he produced a radio from his pocket, “hey, boss, let Silas Thorne know that that Vance boy just came waltzing back home, now we mop him and take him in, now.”

“Caleb, no! You have to run, they have people all over the place and you can’t fight them by yourself!” Elena screamed, her voice breaking with hopelessness as she pleaded with him.

“Don't worry about me, Aunt Elena." said Caleb, adding with a touch of irony, "these guys haven't the faintest idea who they are dealing with." and before Miller could slide the radio back into his pocket, he moved with an agility that could not have been possible for a man of his stature.

He made a grab for the first man’s throat and boosted him into the wall with sufficient power to shatter the plaster, then in one sleek movement he wrenched the wooden bat away and drove it into the ribs of the second abductor, throwing him upended through the room and into a glass coffee table.

The third man attempted to draw a knife, but Caleb grasped his wrist and broke it like a twig. The crack of the breaking bone was the only noise in the room aside from the heavy breaths of the survivors.

Miller took a step back, his face turning a pale gray as he realized that his two partners were either unconscious or dead on the floor, and he began to stammer while raising his hands in a posture of defense.

"You think you're tough because you can fight some street guys? But you’re dead meat, kid, because we already called Silas Thorne, the heir to the C Family, and he’s coming here with real professional security," Miller yelled, as he tried to get some of his swagger back by invoking the name of the old money family that controlled almost all of City B.

Caleb lingered a bit, muttering the name Silas Thorne to himself before realizing that Silas was nothing more than an errand boy who did the dirty work of Isabella Sterling’s social circle.

"You're actually scared of a name like Silas Thorne? That tells me all I need to know about what you've got to work with" Caleb said finally, and when Miller began to mock him, presuming that the pause was a sign of hesitation, Caleb closed the distance between them and he punched Miller in the center of his chest.

​Just then, the sound of several luxury SUVs screeching to a halt outside echoed through the broken doorway, and a man in a tailored suit stepped out, flanked by six armed guards in tactical gear.

​"Now here is someone who actually knows where she is," Caleb murmured to himself as he looked at Silas Thorne walking toward the house, and he reached down to pick up a discarded handgun from the floor, ready to get the answers he needed.

The impact of the blow stopped Miller's heart immediately, and the man fell to the ground silently, Caleb meanwhile hurrying to Elena's side, where he carefully raise her head into his lap.

​"Caleb… you came back for us," Elena whispered, her eyes fluttering as she was finally growing too weak to hold them open, "but they took Mia, they said she was going to be sold at an auction tonight, you have to find her before it’s too late."

Before she could say anything more, she passed out, and Caleb was cut with a cold, serrated grief when he realized how long they had suffered in his absence, while he was off fighting a war on the far side of the globe. He got up and went to the man who was still moaning and trying to get away from the door after the coffee table, that he had thrown through it.

​"Where is the auction? Tell me where they took her and I might just let you live long enough to get to a hospital," Caleb said, pressing his boot into the man's injured shoulder. ​"I don't know, I swear, only the big bosses get the location for those kinds of things, we just deliver the cargo to a warehouse!" the man screamed in pain.