Chapter 14 - The Breach at Dawn
The concussion wave from the blown doors rolled up the spiraling staircase like thunder trapped in a bottle, rattling the antique chandeliers until crystal droplets rained onto the landing. Smoke—thick, acrid, and smelling of burnt petroleum—surged through the corridor. Downstairs, heavy combat boots crunched over fractured marble, accompanied by the cold, metallic snaps of automatic receivers being racked.
“Julian!” Victoria shrieked, pressing her back against the mahogany wall, her knuckles white as she dug them into the wainscoting. “He won’t spare us! Alexander doesn’t know mercy—he never did!”
“Be quiet, Mother,” Julian commanded, his voice dropping into an icy register I had never heard before. It wasn’t panic; it was pure, calculated lethal precision. He shoved an extra magazine into his tactical vest, checked the chamber of his sidearm, and grabbed my arm, pulling both me and Maya tight against his side. “Elena, listen to me. The wine cellar has a subterranean dumbwaiter built during Prohibition. It leads to the drainage culvert behind the ridge. You take Maya. You take the transmitter. Do not stop running until you hit the eastern highway.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I said, my heart hammering violently against my ribs as I looked into his dark, furious eyes. The red tracking diode in my palm felt like a burning ember. “He wants Maya, but he wants to destroy you, Julian. If I leave, you’ll fight him to the death.”
“If you stay, we all die right here,” Julian said, his hand cupping the side of my face with sudden, fierce tenderness amidst the chaos. “Look at me, Elena. I spent seven years believing I was an executioner for a broken family. You and that little girl gave me back my soul. I will burn this mountain to the bedrock before I let Alexander lay a single finger on either of you.”
Before I could answer, automatic gunfire shredded the plaster of the hallway wall just outside our suite. Plaster dust exploded in white clouds. Maya screamed, burying her face into my chest, her tiny fingers digging into my wool sweater with desperate terror.
“Move!” Julian roared.
He rounded the corner first, firing three rapid, suppressed shots. A thud sounded from the corridor, followed by a muffled curse in Russian. Julian waved us forward. We sprinted low along the mezzanine, descending the narrow service stairs that bypassed the grand foyer. Below us, through the wrought-iron banister, I caught sight of him: Alexander Blackwood.
He stood in the center of the demolished foyer, pristine in a cashmere overcoat despite the raining drywall and smoke. Two mercenaries in tactical gear flanked him, sweeping flashlights across the shadows. Alexander looked like a warped mirror image of Julian—taller, paler, with aristocratic features twisted into an insolent, bored smirk.
“Julian!” Alexander’s voice cut through the gunfire like glass scraping across stone. “Don’t make this vulgar, brother! Hand over the Vanderbilt chit and our mother, and I might just grant you the honor of dying like a gentleman!”
Julian pulled the pin on a flash-bang grenade from his belt, leaned over the landing, and dropped it straight toward the marble floor beneath.
May you like
“Close your eyes!” he barked.
I threw myself over Maya, squeezing my eyelids shut just as the world erupted in a blinding, deafening flash of white thunder.