Chapter 4 - Blood Upon the Snow
The steel reinforced door of the master panic room sealed shut with a heavy hydraulic hiss, leaving Clara and Toby cocooned in soundproof safety.
Inside, the room was outfitted with luxury amenities—leather sofas, medical supplies, monitors displaying thirty-two camera feeds of the estate—and an arsenal of weapons lining the rear wall. Toby sat curled on the sofa, his small arms wrapped tightly around Clara’s waist as she watched the monitors with wide, horrified eyes.
On Screen 4, the grand foyer had become a slaughterhouse.
Vincent didn't hide behind cover. He moved through the smoke like a shadow made flesh. Every shot from his twin pistols found a mark. Marcus Voss’s elite mercenaries, men trained in foreign wars, fell like dry wheat before a scythe. When Vincent ran out of ammunition, he closed the distance with terrifying speed, snapping limbs, disarming men in fluid, brutal hand-to-hand combat that demonstrated why the Hale family had ruled the underworld for three generations.
Down in the snow-covered courtyard, Rosalind was screaming, trying to scramble into an armored SUV.
Suddenly, the driver’s side window exploded. Dominic, though wounded, had commandeered a mounted turret on the perimeter wall. The SUV’s tires were shredded by armor-piercing rounds.
Marcus Voss, realizing his strike team was being annihilated, retreated out the front doors into the courtyard, dragging a hysterical Rosalind with him.
“You idiot!” Marcus snarled at his sister, shoving her into the snow. “You told me Hale was completely blinded by you! You told me the matriarch was near death!”
“He was!” Rosalind wept, her designer gown torn and covered in muddy slush. “It was that scullery whore! She poisoned his mind!”
“She didn't poison anything,” a low, lethal voice rumbled through the falling snow.
Marcus spun around, raising his assault rifle.
Vincent stepped out of the front entrance. His white shirt was soaked in blood—none of it his own. His eyes were dead black, devoid of mercy. Behind him stood twelve of his elite black-clad enforcers, their rifles raised in unison.
Marcus fired wildly, but Vincent didn't even flinch. He sidestepped, raising his pistol, and fired a single round through Marcus’s right shoulder, sending the mercenary leader crashing into the snow beside his sister.
“Marcus!” Rosalind shrieked, crawling toward her brother.
Vincent approached them slowly, the snow crunching beneath his polished leather boots. He stopped five feet away, looking down at the two siblings as if they were vermin beneath his heel.
“Vincent... please!” Rosalind pleaded, raising her trembling, manicured hands. “We were going to be married! We were going to build an empire together! Think of our families! The Voss Syndicate controls the northern shipping lanes! If you kill us, our father will wage total war on you!”
Vincent crouched down until his eyes were level with Rosalind’s.
“Your father already sanctioned this attack,” Vincent whispered, his voice dangerously soft. “Which means by sunrise tomorrow, there will no longer be a Voss Syndicate.”
Rosalind’s breath hitched. “What?”
“Dominic has already mobilized four strike teams into your father’s compounds in Detroit and Boston,” Vincent stated coldly. “Every warehouse. Every dock. Every bank account. By dawn, the Voss name will be wiped from the history of this coast.”
He turned his gaze to Marcus, who was groaning in agony in the snow.
“You dared to send men after my son,” Vincent said. “You dared to point a rifle at Clara.”
Marcus coughed up blood, glaring up at Vincent with pure hatred. “That little maid? You’re throwing away an alliance of twenty years for a penniless servant girl?”
Vincent stood up, towering over them both.
“She is worth a thousand of your entire family,” Vincent declared.
He looked at Julian, who had just returned from the boathouse, giving a firm nod that confirmed Eleanor Hale was safe aboard the syndicate’s armored yacht.
“Julian,” Vincent commanded.
“Sir?”
“Throw Marcus into the cellar room zero. The same room my mother occupied. Do not give him medical attention until tomorrow afternoon. Let him experience the cold he designed for an old woman.”
“And Rosalind, Boss?”
Vincent turned his back on his former fiancée. “Strip her of her jewelry. Take her phone. Put her on a freight train to the Canadian border in nothing but the clothes on her back. If she ever steps foot within two hundred miles of Toby or Clara again... bury her alive.”
“No! Vincent! Vincent, look at me!” Rosalind shrieked, thrashing as two burly guards grabbed her by her hair and dragged her across the crimson-stained snow. “You can’t do this to me! I am Rosalind Voss! I am your queen!”
Her screams faded into the freezing winter night as the iron gates slammed shut.
Vincent stood in the falling snow for a long moment, closing his eyes as the cold wind washed the smell of cordite from his face. Then, without another word, he turned and walked back into the manor.
He didn't care about the dead bodies. He didn't care about the shattered glass. He took the stairs two at a time, his heart beating with a sudden, desperate urge he had never felt for any woman in his thirty-two years of life.
He reached the panic room, punched the six-digit override code into the keypad, and waited.
The heavy steel door slid open.
Inside, Clara stood holding Toby’s hand. Her face was pale, her dress disheveled, but as she saw Vincent standing in the doorway—alive, whole, and looking at her with an intensity that took her breath away—her knees gave out.
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Vincent crossed the room in two strides, catching her before she could touch the floor.
***