One of the black SUVs nearest to the gas pumps threw its doors open. Four men stepped out. They were dressed in tailored dark suits, holding suppressed automatic weapons, moving with terrifying, practiced military precision. They didn't shout. They didn't threaten. They just fanned out, their weapons casually aimed toward the young man and his terrified bodyguards.
The young man’s bravado finally shattered. The alcohol and arrogance bled out of him in a sudden, sharp wave of reality. He realized, with a sickening drop in his stomach, that he had no idea what he had just walked into.
He looked down at Leo.
The old man had pushed himself up into a sitting position on the gravel. His torn jacket hung off his shoulders. The deep, heavy ink of the skull and gavel on his chest seemed to catch the blinding glare of the surrounding headlights.
Leo wasn't looking at the army of heavily armed men. He wasn't looking at the automatic weapons. He was just looking at the young man, his weathered face completely devoid of fear.
“I told you to walk away,” Leo said, his voice grating and slow.
“You did this?” the young man stammered, his eyes wide. He tried to point the bat at Leo, but his arm was shaking. “You made that call? Who the hell are you?”
Before Leo could answer, a blinding white spotlight suddenly hit the asphalt, turning the dark night into stark, brilliant daylight.
The heavy, rhythmic chopping of helicopter blades battered the air, sending dust and loose trash spiraling violently across the lot.
The young man looked up, shielding his face from the intense downwash. A sleek, black corporate helicopter descended rapidly out of the night sky, maneuvering expertly before touching down roughly fifty yards away in the empty dirt field adjacent to the station.
The young man’s face instantly changed. A wave of massive, desperate relief washed over him. He recognized the tail number on the chopper.
It was his father.
“You’re dead, old man!” the young man screamed over the roar of the rotors, his arrogant smirk violently snapping back into place. He turned back to Leo, his chest puffing out, the aluminum bat rising again. “You hear me? My father is here! Whatever pathetic biker club you called in, my father is going to buy them out, and then he’s going to let me finish caving your head in!”
The side door of the helicopter slid open before the skids even fully settled on the dirt.
A man in a sharp, thousand-dollar charcoal suit leaped out. He was in his late fifties, his hair silver at the temples, a heavy gold watch flashing on his wrist. This was Richard Vance, a billionaire real estate developer in public, and the most ruthless human trafficker on the western seaboard in private.
He was a man who commanded politicians, bought off judges, and made local police chiefs look the other way. He was a man who never, ever panicked.
But as Vance ran through the swirling dust toward the gas station canopy, his face was entirely drained of blood.
He wasn't walking with power. He was sprinting, his expensive dress shoes slipping awkwardly on the loose gravel. He looked frantic. He looked terrified.
The young man laughed in triumph, stepping away from Leo and walking to meet his father.