Chapter 4 - The Infiltration of Sullivan’s Island
The rain had stopped by midnight on Thursday, leaving behind a thick, suffocating fog that rolled off the Atlantic Ocean, wrapping the marshlands of Sullivan’s Island in a wet, gray shroud.
We sat in a blacked-out GMC Yukon parked down a dead-end sandy lane, two hundred yards from the iron gates of the Mercer estate.
Inside the SUV were four men: Adrian, holding a silenced 9mm SIG Sauer pistol in his lap; two senior Cross tactical guards in black assault gear sitting in the rear seats; and me, wearing dark wool trousers, a black turtleneck sweater, and a leather jacket that Adrian had bought for me in town.
The Mercer compound was illuminated by high floodlights mounted along the perimeter wall. Through the dense fog, the massive three-story plantation-style house looked like a dark, looming monolith surrounded by ancient live oaks.
"Security patrol rolls every twenty minutes," I said quietly, leaning forward between the front seats to look at the tactical monitor mounted on the Yukon's dashboard. "Two guards on the perimeter wall, two near the pool house, and one inside the main kitchen monitoring the camera feeds."
"Where are the camera blind spots?" Adrian asked, not looking away from the night-vision binoculars he held to his eyes.
"The eastern salt marsh," I replied, pointing a finger at the screen. "My father refused to clear the spartina grass along the creek because the environmental board threatened him with fines. The mud is waist-deep, but the motion sensors there have been broken since 2021 because the fiddler crabs keep setting them off."
Adrian lowered the binoculars, turning his head to look at me in the dim green glow of the dashboard lights.
"You're sure you want to go inside?" he asked softly. "You don't have to cross that threshold, Sloane. My men can retrieve the brick."
I touched the silver scar running along the base of my throat—a souvenir from my eighteenth birthday.
"No," I said, my voice steady, cold, and absolute. "If your men go in alone, they won't find it. The key to the brick mortar isn't a tool. It’s an iron pin hidden inside the frame of the cellar door. You wouldn't know where to press."
Adrian stared at me for three seconds, then gave a single, firm nod. He reached over, racked the slide of his SIG Sauer, and engaged the safety.
"Ten minutes," he told the two guards in the back. "If we aren't back at the creek line in fifteen, bring the heavy gear and clear the yard."
"Yes, boss," the lead guard replied, checking his radio frequency.
We slipped out of the Yukon into the freezing, wet night air.
The mud along the eastern marsh was thick, black, and smelled heavily of sulfur and decaying vegetation. We moved like shadows through the six-foot-tall spartina grass, staying low beneath the sweeping beams of the perimeter security lights. Adrian moved right behind me, his heavy hand resting lightly on the small of my back, guiding me through the dark.
We reached the low stone wall at the rear of the estate.
I reached up, finding the familiar iron drainage grate built into the foundation near the old herb garden. I pressed my fingers into the gap between the rusty bars, finding the hidden lever my brother had forgotten existed ten years ago.
With a soft, metallic click, the drainage grate swung outward.
We crawled through the low stone archway into the dark, damp subterranean crawlspace beneath the old house. The air was ice-cold, smelling of dry rot, old brick, and ancient dust.
I led Adrian through the dark, turning left down a low brick tunnel that had been built in the 1840s as a cold storage room for butter and wine.
At the end of the tunnel stood a heavy iron door with a rusted lever latch—the door to the Mercer wine cellar.
I stopped. My breath came in quick, shallow gasps as my mind suddenly flashed back to three weeks spent in this absolute blackness when I was sixteen, listening to the sound of my father's heavy footsteps pacing on the floorboards directly above my head.
Adrian stepped up beside me. He didn't say anything. He simply reached out and took my left hand in his, his large, warm fingers squeezing mine with a firm, grounding pressure.
The phantom weight of the dark lifted.
I reached up to the iron doorframe, sliding my fingers along the top molding until I felt a small, raised iron bolt. I pressed it down firmly while lifting the heavy door latch with my other hand.
The iron door swung inward without a sound.
The wine cellar was cold and vast, lined with thousands of dusty wine bottles sitting in dark oak racks. A single yellow nightlight burned near the ceiling, casting long, strange shadows across the stone floor.
I walked straight to the western wall, bypassing forty-thousand-dollar cases of French Bordeaux, and stopped before the third pillar to the left of the iron frame.
I reached into my leather jacket, pulled out a thin steel screwdriver Adrian had given me, and jammed the tip into the mortar seam above the third brick.
The old mortar crumbled away like dry sand. I pulled the red clay brick out of the wall, setting it on the floor.
Behind the brick lay a dark, hollow cavity.
I reached inside, my fingers brushing against cold, oily plastic. I pulled out a heavy, waterproof Pelican case bound with black electrical tape.
"This is it," I whispered, holding the case against my chest. "The second ledger. Every offshore account, every bribe paid to state senators, every shipment of illegal weapons that crossed the Charleston docks between 2015 and 2024."
"Good girl," Adrian murmured, reaching out to take the case.
Before his fingers could touch the plastic, a loud, heavy CLACK echoed through the wine cellar.
The bright, blinding overhead floodlights suddenly snapped on, illuminating every corner of the vast room with harsh, white light.
"I wondered how long it would take you to come back for your little memory box, Sloane," a sharp, wet voice echoed from the top of the stone stairs.
I froze.
Standing at the top of the cellar stairs, wearing a tailored navy overcoat and holding a nickel-plated .45 caliber pistol, was my brother, Blake.
Behind him stood three broad-shouldered security men armed with tactical shotguns, their barrels pointed directly at Adrian’s chest.
Blake walked slowly down the stone steps, a cruel, mocking smile spreading across his pale, sweaty face. His eyes moved from the Pelican case in my hands to Adrian standing beside me, then to the hand Adrian was holding over his hidden holster.
"Put your hands where I can see them, Cross," Blake sneered, stopping five paces away on the concrete floor. "You're trespassing on private property. I could blow both of your heads off right now and the county sheriff would give me a civic medal for defending my home."
Adrian didn't raise his hands. He stood straight, his body blocking half of mine, his gray eyes looking at Blake with an expression of such cold, absolute boredom that Blake’s mocking smile faltered slightly.
"You brought three men with shotguns to take down one man and your sister, Blake?" Adrian asked softly. "You really are as pathetic as your father said you were."
Blake’s face flushed dark red, the vein in his temple throbbing violently.
"My father is a vegetable!" Blake spat. "And as for my sister... she was supposed to be your problem now. But she couldn't keep her fucking mouth shut, could she?"
Blake took two steps closer, pointing the nickel-plated pistol directly at my face.
"Hand over the box, Sloane," Blake commanded, his voice trembling with a terrifying mixture of rage and fear. "Hand it over, or I'll put a bullet through your knee and let you bleed out on the floor where you used to sleep."
I looked at my brother—at his soft, coward’s face, at the expensive suit paid for by the blood he had beaten out of my skin, at the gun held in his shaking, slick hands.
I didn't hand him the box.
I raised my chin, my fingers locking tight around the plastic handles of the case, and looked him directly in the eyes.
"No," I said clearly.
Blake’s jaw worked violently. "What did you say to me?"
"I said no, Blake," I repeated, stepping out from behind Adrian’s shoulder so I was standing fully exposed before his gun. "You don't own me anymore. You sold me to the Crosses to save your own skin. And the moment you signed that paper, you lost the right to give me orders."
"You arrogant little bitch!" Blake screamed, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Before his brain could register the movement, Adrian moved.
It was not a human speed; it was a violent, terrifying blur of dark wool and flash-steel.
Adrian’s left hand shot out, catching Blake’s right wrist and twisting it upward with a sickening CRACK of breaking bone. The nickel-plated .45 went off, firing a bullet harmlessly into the concrete ceiling as Blake let out a high-pitched, agonizing shriek of pain.
In the same split second, Adrian’s right hand drew the silenced SIG Sauer from his jacket.
PUFF. PUFF.
Two muffled, dry shots echoed through the cellar.
The two guards holding shotguns behind Blake dropped to the floor like sacks of wet flour, their weapons clattering against the stone. The third guard dropped his shotgun, threw his hands into the air, and fell back against the cellar stairs, screaming in absolute terror.
Adrian didn't shoot the third man. He kept his left hand locked around Blake’s broken wrist, forcing my brother down onto his knees in the middle of the concrete floor.
Adrian brought the barrel of the hot, smoking SIG Sauer up, pressing it flat against the side of Blake’s sweaty, pale face.
"If you make another sound, Blake," Adrian whispered, his voice as quiet as a falling leaf, "I will shoot you in the throat."
Blake went dead silent. Tears of agony poured down his cheeks as he hovered on his knees, clutching his shattered wrist against his chest, staring up at Adrian with the wild, terrified eyes of a trapped rat.
Adrian turned his head, looking at me over his shoulder.
"Are you alright, Sloane?" he asked softly.
I stood holding the Pelican case, my breathing calm, my pulse steady for the first time in twelve years.
"I am perfect," I said.
May you like
Adrian turned back to Blake, tapping the cold steel barrel of the gun against my brother’s cheekbone.
"Now, Blake," Adrian said smoothly, "you and I are going to have a very long, very detailed conversation about where you put eleven million dollars of my wife's money."
