Sterling Justice Chapter 1

Sterling Justice

The warehouse stank of old oil, sweat, and fear. Rusted girders creaked overhead, the only witnesses to the ritual playing out on the cracked concrete floor.

Tom Adams stood alone in the centre of the ring, dressed in a dark suit and tie, carrying a briefcase. He looked every inch the frightened family lawyer, frightened enough to be pretending he was shaking slightly as he placed the case on the ground.

Around him, the kidnappers circled like dogs, jeering and whooping. A dozen of them, lean and feral, bald heads, tattoos, biker clothes and the smell of weed. Their weapons slung casually in their hands a mixture of guns, knives and chains. Their leader, a bull-necked man with a tattoo running up his cheek and two tears tattooed below his left eye stepped forward and spat on the floor inches from Tom’s shoes. He smiled revealing a mouth full of gold and silver teeth,

“Thought you’d be clever, old man. Thought you could stall us. Run us around eh? All stopped didn’t it when the second video arrived. Parents of this bitch couldn’t take it any more could they. Their little girl gang banged by four of my guys here. Amazing what a bit of rape can do to concentrated the mind. So here you are, right on time with the money!” It’s all there isn’t it ? Wouldn’t like to have to send you back for more with another video would we?

Tom didn’t answer. He set the briefcase upright and snapped it open. Bundles of cash stared up at the gang like treasure. The leader’s face split into a grin.

“Bring her out.”

From the shadows, two men dragged a small girl into the circle. Fourteen years old, wrists tied, face bruised, her school uniform ripped, dress hanging at an oblique angle filthy with dirt. Her legs were streaked with blood. They shoved her to the floor in front of Tom and laughed as she whimpered.

The leader crouched, snatched up a bundle of notes, sniffed it like a pig finding truffles, then shoved it into his jacket pocket. He looked at Tom with the smugness of a man who believed himself untouchable. “Count it Jake!” Jake stepped forward kicking the girl as he passed. Two minutes later Jake nodded. “Its all here.”

“Business complete. Now, you die. You and the girl. Nothing personal, We just don’t leave lose ends!”

The gang leader lifted his pistol, which one first? The girl you can see her go as your last moment in this world” He laughed and then the world exploded.

The first shot cracked like thunder. The leader’s smile froze mid-taunt as half his skull vaporised, spraying red mist across the briefcase and the money. He collapsed like a felled ox, pistol clattering from his hand.

For a heartbeat, the warehouse went silent. Then chaos erupted.

Kidnappers panicked , weapons jerked up, but the second volley came before they could even one could squeeze a trigger. Sharp, surgical shots, heads snapping back, torsos collapsing. One after another, the kidnappers dropped, like marionettes with their strings cut.

The girl curled into a ball, covering her ears. Tom stayed perfectly still, hands loose at his sides, waiting for the all clear.

Four seconds is all it took.

Smoke curled in the flickering light. Bodies sprawled across the concrete, weapons scattered, money turned scarlet. The laughter, the jeering, the arrogance, the threat of death all gone, replaced by silence broken only by the girl’s sobs.

Boots moved silently from the shadows. Four men in black moved fast, rifles tight to shoulders, scanning, clearing. Their faces hidden by balaclavas, their movements crisp, professional.

“Clear,” one barked.

“Clear,” echoed another.

Tom crouched beside the girl, gently lifting her chin. Her terrified eyes widened with animal fear when she saw him, but he spoke softly, steady, the voice of calm in a raging storm.

“It’s over. You’re safe now, we will take you home.

One of the masked men knelt, slicing the plastic ties from her wrists with a combat knife. He handed Tom a small earpiece.

A voice crackled in Tom’s ear. Deep, calm. Sergeant Major Phillips.

“ No survivors.”

Tom lifted the girl into his arms. She clung to his neck, trembling, sobbing but alive.

He glanced once more at the scene around him, a dozen men who’d thought themselves untouchable, Kidnappers and murderers of over a dozen children in the last seven months. Now nothing but corpses cooling on the floor.

Outside, the night air was thick and humid, the Florida sky streaked with purple as dawn approached. A black SUV idled by the loading dock, its passenger doors open.

Tom laid the girl gently on the back seat. “Take her home,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

Phillips emerged from the shadows, removing his mask, his broad frame unmistakable. He gave Tom a hard look, then softened slightly. “You OK, Boss ?”

Tom nodded, but his eyes were cold. “Justice, Phil. That’s all this was.”

Phillips grunted. “Maybe. But every time we send a message like this, someone new listens. Someone else will want to test us.”

Tom stared back at the warehouse. For a moment, he saw not corpses but shadows of his own past: his daughter’s screams, the red mist of rage when Harry Peters’ men had taken her, beat her, violated her. Tonight had been about more than the girl in the SUV. It had been about proving that he, they, his family are here, alive, and recovering the life they once had.

He turned away. “Let them test us.”

The SUV pulled out onto the empty road, the girl safe inside. Tom and Phillips stood together in the predawn silence. Behind them, the warehouse door swung shut, sealing the carnage within.

By the time the police arrived, tipped off by an anonymous call Sterling were gone, the only thing left was a whisper that would spread across Miami by noon:

Sterling Justice Chapter 2

Lines in the Sand

Chief of Police Raymond Kenton slammed his fist onto the desk so hard that his coffee spilled across the paperwork.

“Goddammit!” His voice thundered across the oak-panelled office. “Twelve dead in a warehouse execution and we’ve got nothing, no prints, no cameras, no witnesses. What the hell am I running here? A circus?”

The senior officers standing in front of his desk shifted uncomfortably. Nobody wanted to be in the line of fire when Kenton’s temper exploded.

One of them cleared his throat. “Sir, forensics says it was spotless , totally professional. Military-grade precision. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing. All twelve died within a few seconds. There are no ejected cases, no prints, nothing.”

Kenton leaned forward, eyes blazing. “Of course it was professional. You think some gang-bangers just happened to learn how to shoot like Delta Force at a turkey shoot? No. Somebody’s operating on my streets, taking the law into their own hands. Vigilantes? Some government department? Some black ops team? Who the hell knows? Who ever it is I won’t have it.”

He jabbed a finger at the map of Miami pinned to the wall. “I want saturation. Flood the docks, sweep every warehouse, shake every informant. Someone’s playing judge, jury, and executioner here and I want them stopped.”

 

Across town, the mood was very different.

Lieutenant Danny O’Hara, head of the precinct that covered Little Havana and the docks, sat with his men in the break room, watching the news coverage on the flickering TV. Reporters stood outside the cordoned-off warehouse, microphones shaking in the early morning wind.

“Sources say all twelve members of a known kidnapping ring were found dead, each killed with precision rifle fire. The girl they abducted was returned to her family. No ransom was paid. Police have no leads.”

The camera cut to the girl’s mother. “They saved her, thank God they saved her.” The reporter pushed for more “Who are they? Who saved her? The mother shrugged “I don’t know, I really don’t know”

The room was silent for a moment. Then one of O’Hara’s sergeants let out a low whistle.

“Saved her. That’s more than we’ve ever managed when that lot were running wild running rings around us and the system.”

Another officer shook his head. “Boss, we really going to try to hunt these guys down? I mean… twelve scumbags gone, no more court delays, no more technicalities, no more kids taken . Who’s crying for them?”

A murmur of agreement rippled around the room.

O’Hara leaned back in his chair, folding his arms. His face was unreadable, but the glint in his eye betrayed him.

“Orders are orders,” he said flatly. “Kenton wants us to ‘find’ them, so we’ll file the paperwork, knock on a few doors, rattle a few informants.”

He paused, letting the words sink in.

“But I’ll tell you this unless these people screw up badly, we’re not going to find squat. And between you and me, I’m not losing any sleep over it. As far as I’m concerned, they just saved us a stack of aggravation.”

The room broke into quiet chuckles. One of the younger cops raised his coffee cup. “To these guys whoever the hell they are.”

Cups clinked around the table.

Back at headquarters, Kenton stared out of his office window at the city skyline, his fury simmering. He could already hear the whispers, politicians demanding answers, the press baying for control, rivals smirking at his impotence.

Somewhere out there, someone had drawn a line in the sand. And Kenton knew one thing with absolute certainty.

The next time they struck, it would be his badge on the line.

Sterling Justice Chapter 3

Florida Sunshine, English Shadows

The Florida sun bled across Biscayne Bay, a sparkling mirror of sun gold lapping against the hulls of moored yachts. From the deck of his modest villa, Tom Adams tried to let the calm settle into his bones. He had promised his children a new life, far from the UK’s smoke, shadows and memories. Sunshine, palm trees, fresh air. A chance to heal.

But promises had a way of dissolving

Phillip, his son, was in the garden, stripped to the waist, pounding a heavy bag that swayed from a palm. Each punch cracked like a gunshot, each jab fuelled not just by the boy’s strength but by his guilt. Sweat poured from him, dark patches spreading across his shorts. He had the wiry frame of a young man who hadn’t stopped growing, but there was already steel in his eyes. Steel and shame. He still carried the night of his sister’s attack like a weight across his shoulders. He’d been out with friends when Alexandra needed him. He should have been there. He hadn’t been there, and Phillip punished himself for that mistake every day.

Alexandra, his daughter, sat under the veranda, a book lying open in her lap. She hadn’t turned a page in twenty minutes. Her gaze was fixed on the horizon, but her eyes saw only what her memory replayed. Her father’s comrades, good men, men she’d known since childhood unsettled her now. Their size, their power, their booming laughter: it all dragged her back into the nightmare of strong hands pinning her down, of a world where safety had been shattered in a heartbeat. The memories, the smells, the pain and the fear all tumbled for space in her mind.

She flinched even at Phillip’s punches slamming into canvas.

Tom watched them both with a soldier’s eye and a father’s heart. He had faced death in deserts and jungles, but watching his children broken in ways no training could prepare him for was his hardest battle yet.

The phone rang. The secure line.

He stepped inside, shut the glass doors, and answered on the third ring.
“Adams.”

The pause on the other end was long enough to chill the air. Then a clipped voice, urgent, edged with disbelief.
“He’s out.”

Tom’s grip on the phone tightened. “Who?”

“ Harry Peters. He’s escaped.”

For a moment the room tilted. Harry Peters the crime lord who had ordered Alexandra brutalised, the man whose empire had strangled a city with drugs and fear. The man Tom had broken, personally. Delivered to hell.

Tom had sent Peters chained like an animal, teeth shattered, spirit crushed. He had shipped him off like cargo to a place worse than prison, a place where survival itself was a daily humiliation. Harry Peters wasn’t supposed to come back. Not ever. Tom knew that it had been a mistake, he should have killed him. Finished him . But he wanted more than Harry Peter’s life. He wanted his soul and now that act of extra revenge was coming back to haunt him .

“When?” Tom’s voice was flat, but his pulse hammered in his ears.

“Forty-eight hours ago. If Peters is breathing and free, you know who he’s coming for.”

Tom ended the call. The silence roared. He set the phone down carefully.

Through the window, Phillip was still hammering the bag, punishing himself. Alexandra still sat in the shadows, flinching with every thud.

Tom pressed his palms to the cool glass. He had promised them safety. He had promised them a new beginning.

But Harry Peters was a shadow that refused to die.

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