195 I walked into our anniversary party with a man my husband had never met. He laughed in front of everyone and asked, / Chapter 59 / 86

Chapter 59 - The Hudson River Siege

The leader of the Ironclad team—a hulking ex-mercenary with a scarred eyebrow and a tactical radio strapped to his chest—spat onto the ties and drew an electroshock baton with an ominous blue sizzle.

"Take the big one down!" the commander barked. "Sterling Vance pays the legal fees! Break his knees!"

They surged forward in a coordinated pack of four.

It was the last mistake they ever made.

Jonah met the first man like an oncoming freight train. He ducked under the wild swing of the electrified baton, stepped inside the guard, and drove his palm directly upward into the man’s sternum. The impact sounded like an oak branch breaking. The mercenary’s breath left him in a ragged gasp as he was lifted clean off the concrete and thrown three yards back into the dirt.

Before the second attacker could bring his baton down, Mack was already there. Mack didn't even use the pry-bar; he swung a ninety-pound steel coupler pin in a brutal horizontal arc that shattered the attacker’s knee and sent him crashing into the rail with an agonized scream.

Jonah spun, caught the third guard by the throat in mid-lunge, used the man’s own momentum to slam him headfirst into the iron flank of the diesel shunter, and dropped him limp onto the ballast.

The fourth guard froze, looking at the three unconscious men writhing on the concrete in less than eight seconds. His hands began to shake. He dropped his baton and bolted toward the service exit stairs like a terrified rabbit.

"Coward!" Mack spat after him, leaning against the locomotive wheel and wiping sweat from his forehead. "City boys. All talk, no iron in their blood."

I walked calmly past the wreckage, my high heels clicking steadily against the ties, until I stood before the lead shunter engine that was blocking our clearance. The cab door cracked open, and a terrified transit yardmaster looked down, pale as a ghost.

"Open the switch," I said, looking up at him with icy authority.

"I—I can't, ma'am! Mr. Vance... Mr. Vance promised to revoke my pension if I let Engine 101 move—"

"Mr. Vance won't have a company by noon tomorrow," I interrupted, pulling an executive transit dispatch binder from under my arm and throwing it up into his lap. "You are looking at the legal majority owner of the Hudson River Freight Corridor. If you throw that switch right now, your pension is doubled and guaranteed under the Ross Trust. If you keep this train pinned for another ten seconds, I will have the Federal Rail Administration prosecute you as a co-conspirator in maritime sabotage. Choose."

The yardmaster swallowed hard, looked at Jonah standing below with blood on his knuckles and cold death in his eyes, and lunged for the hydraulic switch controls.

A heavy pneumatic hiss echoed through the subterranean cavern. The steel switch frog clanged into alignment with a thunderous *chunk*.

"Track 61 is clear!" the yardmaster screamed over the intercom. "Clear for westbound departure to the Hudson River junction!"

"Westbound?" Mack blinked, turning to me in confusion. "Empress, we just got here! We came to Manhattan to take their throat, not run back to Chicago!"

"We aren't running, Mack," I said, a dangerous smile spreading across my lips as the adrenaline sang in my veins. "Sterling expects us to fight him in the Manhattan courts. He expects us to sit in hotel conference rooms while his lawyers strangle our charter with paperwork."

Jonah walked over, picking his tuxedo jacket up from the hood of the truck and draping it gently around my shoulders. He looked into my eyes, already reading the fire burning behind them. "Where are we taking her, Nina?"

"To the docks," I said, pointing toward the western exit tunnels that ran directly under the Hudson River toward the Port of New York and New Jersey container terminals. "Sterling’s real wealth isn't in his Midtown bank towers. It’s in Car Sixty-Four—the automated deep-water container terminal in Newark. That’s where he receives the rare-earth mineral shipments Julian Croft was smuggling out of the Great Salt Lake. Arthur just confirmed it. The cargo vessel *Titan Empress* docked at midnight. If we seize that terminal under our federal charter before dawn, we cut off the carotid artery of the Vance fortune."