Chapter 7 - The Trap at the St. Jude Hotel
By noon the next day, Tristan was back in Manhattan. He didn't hide. He walked right into the lobby of the St. Jude Hotel, a luxury establishment owned by the Vail family where Julian kept his penthouse suite.
He didn't bring an army. He brought the flash drive.
He walked past the security guards, who froze at the sight of him, their hands twitching toward their jackets. Tristan didn't even look at them. He rode the private elevator to the top floor, the doors opening directly into a sprawling, glass-walled apartment overlooking Central Park.
Marcus Doyle was there, sitting at a marble bar, a bottle of scotch between his elbows. Julian Vail stood by the window, his back to the door, looking down at the tiny yellow cabs below.
"You're late for your own funeral, brother," Julian said without turning around.
"The delivery van had a bad transmission," Tristan replied, walking to the center of the room and tossing the silver flash drive onto the coffee table. It skidded across the glass, stopping against an empty crystal ashtray.
Marcus looked at the drive, his face tightening. "Where did you get that?"
"Thomas Bennett’s basement," Tristan said. "The one you forgot to check thoroughly before you hung him. It’s all in there, Marcus. The skimming. The Kane merger. The arsenic in our father’s digitalis."
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Julian turned around then. He looked remarkably like Tristan, but softer around the jaw, his eyes bright with a manic, desperate energy. "It doesn't matter what's on that drive, Tristan. The captains already signed the paperwork. The Kanes control the port authority now. You're a king without a kingdom."
"I never cared about the kingdom, Julian," Tristan said softly. "I cared about the family. And you killed it."
