Chapter 5 - The Shadow of the Past
"Boss! We've got a breach on the lower perimeter!"
Marcus sprinted into the office, his expression dark and urgent, stopping abruptly when he saw Elowen standing beside Johnny. Marcus’s eyes flicked between them, a grim tension settling over his shoulders.
Johnny was instantly transformed. The vulnerability vanished, replaced by the lethal, ice-cold focus of a general preparing for war.
"What kind of breach, Marcus?" Johnny demanded, stepping in front of Elowen as if to shield her from the air itself.
"It’s not the O’Connells and it’s not local muscle," Marcus said, pulling a tablet from his jacket. "It’s Leadford."
Elowen’s face drained of color. A cold shudder ran down her spine. "Briggs? But... the restraining order... the bus ticket..."
"He never left Texas," Marcus explained grimly, tapping the screen. "He spent the last six months bouncing around cheap motels in Beaumont, feeding his gambling habit through local loan sharks. Tonight, one of his creditors threatened to cut his fingers off if he didn't clear his tab. Desperate, Leadford decided to come back to Houston, track down your apartment, and try to extort money from you to pay his debt."
Johnny’s eyes narrowed into slits of pure obsidian. The temperature in the penthouse seemed to plummet twenty degrees.
"Where is he now?" Johnny asked, his voice dropping into a register that made even Marcus flinch.
"He’s in the parking garage downstairs," Marcus said. "He managed to slip past the security gate by tailing a delivery truck. He’s currently standing outside your personal elevator bank on the parking level, screaming your name, Elowen. He’s holding a rusted tire iron."
Elowen grabbed Johnny’s sleeve, her hands trembling. "Johnny... what if he finds where we live? What if he hurts the girls?"
Johnny covered her trembling hand with his large, warm palm. His touch was an anchor in a sudden storm.
"He won't," Johnny said softly.
He turned to Marcus. "Clear the garage. Lock down all public exits. And bring him up here."
"Up here, Boss?" Marcus blinked. "To the forty-fourth floor?"
"Yes," Johnny said coldly. "If he wants to settle accounts with Elowen, let him do it in a room where there’s nowhere left to run."
Ten minutes later, the private elevator chime echoed through the penthouse office.
The heavy steel doors slid open.
Briggs Leadford stumbled out, disheveled, reeking of stale beer and cheap tobacco, his eyes wild and bloodshot. In his right hand, he dragged a heavy, rusted tire iron across the pristine white marble floor, leaving a screeching, metallic trail.
"Elowen!" Briggs yelled, his voice echoing off the high glass walls. "I know you're in here, you ungrateful bitch! You think a couple of fancy suits and a million-dollar lawyer can keep me away from my family?"
He stopped, blinking against the bright lights of the penthouse, and finally spotted Elowen standing beside Johnny behind the massive mahogany desk.
Briggs grinned an ugly, broken-toothed smile. "There you are. Get your coat. We're going home."
He took a step forward, raising the tire iron—
And then he saw Johnny Thorne stepping out from the shadows.
The look in Johnny’s eyes froze Briggs in his tracks. It wasn't anger. It was the absolute, crushing emptiness of a man watching an insect crawl across his dining table.
"Leadford," Johnny said quietly.
Briggs swallowed hard, his bravado instantly evaporating. "M-Mr. Thorne... I didn't know you and her... I mean, if she's working for you—"
"She doesn't work for me," Johnny interrupted, walking slowly across the floor toward him. "She is under my roof. And you violated the only rule I gave you."
"I was just—I needed twenty bucks! Just twenty bucks for gas!" Briggs whimpered, backing up toward the elevator doors.
"You didn't come back for twenty dollars, Briggs," Johnny said, stopping three feet away. "You came back because you're a bully who can't stand the thought that something you broke learned how to heal without you."
Briggs panicked. With a desperate snarl, he swung the tire iron in a wide, vicious arc aimed directly at Johnny’s head.
It was the last mistake he would ever make.
Johnny didn't even flinch. With blinding, brutal speed, he ducked inside the arc of the swing, grabbed Briggs’s wrist with his left hand, and twisted it downward with a sickening pop that echoed through the room.
Briggs shrieked, dropping the tire iron as his wrist fractured.
Before he could hit the floor, Johnny delivered a devastating, precise right hook to Briggs’s jaw that lifted the larger man off his feet and slammed him hard against the glass wall of the elevator lobby.
Briggs slid down the glass, unconscious, blood pooling slightly from his lip onto the marble.
Silence returned to the penthouse. Heavy, absolute, final.
Marcus stepped out of the elevator car behind the unconscious man, holding a pair of heavy zip-ties. He looked down at Briggs with mild boredom. "Should I drop him off in Beaumont, Boss?"
"Drop him in a federal penitentiary," Johnny said, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt as if he had just brushed off a speck of dust. "Make sure the D.A. attaches every outstanding fraud and extortion charge we’ve compiled over the last year. Let him rot behind bars until he forgets what the sun looks like."
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"Done," Marcus said, hauling Briggs's limp body back into the elevator.
The doors closed, and they were gone.
