Chapter 9 - Fire and Steel
The lock sheared off with a blinding shower of blue sparks.
The heavy oak door flew inward, splintering against the wall as a massive man in tactical black armor stepped through the smoke, his assault rifle raised and scanning the room with cold, mechanical precision.
He didn't even see me coming.
I swung the heavy iron poker with every ounce of adrenaline and rage I had built up over months of running, catching him squarely across the side of his helmet. The man staggered sideways, his rifle discharging harmlessly into the ceiling as he crashed against the wall.
“Run, Eleanor!” I screamed, shoving past him into the smoky corridor.
“Aurora, wait—!” Eleanor cried out, but I was already sprinting down the hallway toward the grand staircase.
Flames were licking up the edges of the second-floor banister, casting a hellish, flickering orange glow across the oil paintings and shattered crystal of the ancestral foyer. Sirens blared from the automated fire suppression system, spraying thick, freezing water down from the ceiling vents.
Down in the center of the grand entrance hall, chaos reigned.
Michael Moretti stood in the middle of a literal war zone. Two armed intruders lay motionless on the marble floor near the double doors, while Michael—his suit jacket discarded, his shirt soaked in sweat and soot—exchanged rapid, brutal close-quarters fire with a third operative near the foot of the stairs.
“Michael!” I yelled over the roar of the flames.
His head snapped up, his slate-gray eyes locking onto mine with a flash of raw, unfiltered panic that I had never seen on his face before.
“Aurora, get back!” he roared, putting a round straight into the shoulder of the man charging him.
The operative dropped his weapon and crumpled to the marble. But before Michael could take a breath, a heavy shadow detached itself from the balcony above, dropping silently down behind him with a steel garrote wire raised high in both hands.
“Behind you!” I screamed, dropping the iron poker and lunging forward across the burning foyer.
I didn't think. I grabbed a heavy, bronze umbrella stand and hurled it with all my strength, catching the descending assassin square in the ribs just as the wire whipped toward Michael’s neck.
The man grunted, losing his footing on the wet marble, and Michael spun around with lethal grace, his pistol flashing once in the smoky gloom.
Silence dropped over the foyer, broken only by the crackle of the flames and the steady hiss of the overhead sprinklers.
Michael stood amidst the smoke and water, his chest heaving, his eyes wide as he looked from the fallen intruder up to me. In two long strides, he crossed the wet floor, grabbed my face in both hands, and pulled me violently against his chest, burying his face in my hair.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded, his voice thick, rough, and trembling with a fierce intensity that scared me more than the guns.
“I’m fine,” I whispered, clutching the front of his soaked shirt. “Michael… they’re looking for my father’s ledger. They think I have the encryption keys.”
Michael froze. He pulled back slowly, his slate-gray eyes locking onto mine with a dark, terrifying realization.
May you like
Before he could speak, the massive front doors of the mansion were blown completely off their hinges in a blinding flash of light, and a dozen more armed men poured into the burning foyer, led by a figure I never expected to see again.
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