Chapter 32 - The Midnight Convoy
I fired twice.
My rounds struck Sterling's chest armor, knocking him backward against the heavy oak entrance doors. Julian surged forward like a wounded panther, closing the distance in two strides. Despite his shattered shoulder, he slammed Sterling into the stone wall, disarming him with a brutal wrist lock and pinning the operative by his throat.
Sterling coughed blood, his fingers clawing uselessly at Julian’s iron grip. "You... you think you won... the High Council has fifty teams... between here and Montreal..."
"Let them come," Julian snarled, his face inches from Sterling's. "Tell Ethan I kept my promise."
With a sickening snap, Julian drove his elbow into Sterling’s temple, knocking the operative unconscious onto the cold stones.
Julian stumbled backward, gasping for air, and collapsed to his knees. I rushed forward, catching him before he hit the ground, while Maya scrambled over, throwing her arms around both of us.
"We need to move. Now," I said, wiping a mixture of sweat and blood from Julian’s brow. "His reinforcement convoys will be tracing his radio ping."
Together, Maya and I hauled Julian down into the hidden cellar. The armored SUV started on the first turn of the ignition key, its hidden military-grade engine purring smoothly in the subterranean darkness.
I took the wheel, Maya secured Julian in the back seat with blankets and emergency medical kits, and I slammed my foot on the accelerator. The heavy vehicle burst through the camouflaged timber doors at the rear of the cellar, emerging onto a forgotten logging trail that wound deep into the wilderness, away from the interstate and the syndicate’s surveillance net.
For two hours, we drove through the morning mist, winding through mountain passes until the radio frequencies went dead and the tracking satellites lost us in the dense canopy of the northern pines.
In the rearview mirror, I watched Maya holding Julian's hand while applying pressure to his fresh bandages. Julian’s eyes were open, watching me in the mirror with a look of profound, vulnerable warmth that erased every shadow of the Blackwood dynasty.
"Where are we going, Elena?" Maya asked softly, her voice weary but hopeful.
May you like
"Somewhere they can never find us," I said, offering her a genuine smile through my tears. "A place where the name Blackwood and Vanderbilt mean nothing."
For the first time in five years, the air smelled like freedom. The nightmare seemed to be receding in the morning light.