Chapter 155 Fancy food coloring

Chapter 155 Fancy food coloring
Tegan

Before I could even take another breath, two massive guards violently yanked Hayes off the wet sand by his blood-stained suit jacket.

The heavy zip-ties groaned against his wrists behind his back as they hauled him to his feet. He staggered for a split second, his boots digging deep into the sand, before a third guard stepped up and shoved the cold metal barrel of a submachine gun directly against his temple.

"Any funny movements from anyone, and the boy dies," the guard yelled to the crowd.

Hayes didn't even flinch with the gun pressed into his skull. He stood tall, a towering, terrifying force of nature even in chains. A trail of fresh dark blood leaked from the cut over his eyebrow, staining his cheek. His eyes turned into chips of murderous, wild flint as he glared up at the elevated stage.

"You're a dead man, Garrison," Hayes growled fiercely, his deep baritone a low animal growl that vibrated straight through the floorboards.

He spat cold curses directly at the stage, his jaw clenching so hard the muscle beneath his stubble looked ready to snap. "You cowardly piece of shit. You touch Tegan, or you drop that fire, and I swear to God I will spend every single dollar I have wiping your entire family name off the face of the earth. Let her fucking go."

The Dean, Mr. Garrison, let out a sharp, mocking chuckle into the microphone. His thumb rested directly over the ignition cap of lighter.

"Empty threats," Garrison sneered, his face looking totally unhinged under the red strobe lights.

"You have no leverage here, Ashford. Your money can't stop a chemical fire."

The beach was a total death trap. The entire crowd was weeping silently into the sand, the guards’ fingers twitching on their triggers. Garrison was preparing to strike the flame.

I stepped right into the center spotlight, completely breaking away from the guard holding me. My spine was perfectly straight as I forced myself to be brave.

I raised the wireless microphone I had been clutching with a death grip. It was supposed to be for my speech when the color sprayed down on us. But looking at where we were now, my face was a perfect mask of calmness that I definitely didn't feel.

I didn't have Hayes's massive muscles, but I had a razor-sharp brain that knew exactly how to break a man's mind.

"You're bad at basic logistics, Mr. Garrison," I said coldly, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.

Garrison stopped pacing, tilting the microphone toward me in the red shadows. "What did you say? you little brat"

"I said your plan failed before it even started," I repeated, a slow, incredibly arrogant smile spreading across my lips.
I pointed casually toward the helicopter still hovering in the dark sky.

"Did you really think we wouldn't notice a massive order of a highly volatile, restricted chemical being delivered to Hayes's private hangar? Hayes's finance team flags everything. My team intercepted your chemical shipment this morning. We swapped the real canisters out for a harmless, black organic dye. You're holding a flame to fancy food coloring, Garrison. Go ahead. Strike the match. Make yourself a pathetic laughing stock in front of the entire world."

Confused, desperate to prove me wrong, and terrified that his grand master plan was just a joke, Garrison’s focus completely cracked. He froze, his eyes darting frantically between me and the lighter in his hand as his mind raced to calculate if I was telling the truth.

That exact split second of broken focus was all Hayes needed to cause a distraction. Down on the sand, Hayes went into beast mode.

Seizing the moment of distraction, he violently threw his head back, smashing his skull directly into the face shield of the guard holding the gun to his temple. The operator's nose shattered with a loud crack, and he collapsed into the sand.

With his hands still zip-tied behind his back, Hayes spun and launched his 6'4" frame like a human battering ram, tackling a second guard hard into the shoreline.

"Get him!" the other guards screamed.

The tight military bottleneck formation completely fell apart. Every single tactical operator on that beach panicked, thinking Hayes was the only real threat. That was the plan.

They completely ignored me, viewing a pregnant girl in a white dress as completely harmless compared to a raging, blood-soaked billionaire fighting like a wild animal.

While the guards rushed to subdue Hayes, I lunged forward with everything I had. My hand reached out, my fingers wrapping around a heavy, solid stainless-steel ice bucket that had been knocked over on the side catering table near the steps.

I charged up the stage stairs, completely unnoticed. Before Garrison could even lift his head from his panic, I swung the heavy steel bucket with all my strength, slamming it brutally right across his jaw.

The solid impact cracked loudly across the shoreline. Garrison let out a strangled gasp of pure agony. His glasses flew right off his face as the sheer force sent him crashing violently over the center mahogany podium.

The lighter flew out of his hand, rolling uselessly into the dark sand.
He scrambled to stand up, coughing blood, his hands clawing at the wood, but I didn't give him a fraction of a second to breathe.

I grabbed the heavy, solid iron frame of the microphone stand, slamming it down across his upper body to pin his arm flat against the floor. With a ruthless, unyielding focus, I brought my silver heel down with all my body weight in a brutal, heavy stomp directly onto his knee joint.

The bone violently snapped sideways under my heel. Garrison let out a sharp, piercing shriek of pure, agonizing pain, his leg buckling completely as he collapsed onto his side, weeping and clutching his shattered knee.

I dove down, my fingers wrapping tightly into his silver hair. I forced his head down, violently slamming his face into the hard wooden deck multiple times, one, two, three, until the speakers distorted with his groans.

The impacts completely dazed his mind and shattered his nose, leaving his face a bloody, broken mess, but keeping him conscious enough to understand his total defeat.

I grabbed the heavy, iron-ringed binder from the podium, snapped open the sharp metal rings, and drove the steel prongs directly against the soft, pulsing skin of his throat, holding him at absolute death point.

"Drop your weapons!" I roared into the microphone, my voice a cold, terrifying wave of power that echoed across the entire dark ocean.

Because I was pinning the Dean down behind the massive mahogany podium, the guards down on the sand couldn't get a clear line of sight to shoot me without risking hitting their boss.
I dug the steel prongs deep enough into Garrison’s neck to draw a fine line of blood.

"Step away from Hayes right now! Tell your guards to back off and release my man, or I swear to God I will slide this steel straight through your throat!"

The Dean squeaked, a wet, terrified gasp escaping his split lips as the raw terror of death completely broke his sanity. He thrashed weakly against the floor, his voice a pathetic, high-pitched whine through the microphone speaker.

"Drop... drop the guns!" Garrison squeaked in pure panic, his chest heaving as he stared up at my furious face.

"Do what she says! Release Ashford! Release him right now! Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

The guards froze, looking from the raging, blood-soaked Hayes to the stage where I held their boss's life in my hands, their weapons slowly lowering.