Chapter 32 - Blood on the White Marble
Julian reacted instantly. He shoved me behind the reinforced grand piano at the rear of the stage as automatic gunfire ripped through the wooden podium, sending splinters showering across the platform.
"Stay down!" Julian commanded, ejecting an empty magazine and slapping a fresh one home in a single blur of movement. He fired around the corner of the piano, dropping the lead mercenary with two pinpoint shots to the chest.
The remaining three operators advanced in a textbook wedge formation, laying down suppressive fire. Their lasers flickered across the piano's lacquered finish, inching toward my position. I could hear their boots crushing shattered champagne flutes on the marble floor.
I looked down at Leo. He was trembling violently, his eyes wide with horror, the memory of his past torture flashing behind his hazel gaze. I couldn't allow them to terrify him ever again. The fear within me burned away, leaving behind a furnace of pure, blinding rage.
Beside my trembling fingers lay a broken crystal decanter from the banquet table. Its thick neck was intact, tapering into three jagged, razor-sharp glass fangs. I tightened my grip around it until my knuckles turned stark white.
"Flank right! Grab the boy alive, eliminate the woman!" a gruff voice commanded in heavily accented English.
A tactical boot rounded the edge of the piano. The mercenary aimed his rifle at Julian's blind spot.
I didn't think. I launched myself forward with the feral fury of a mother defending her cub.
Before the shooter could swing his muzzle toward me, I drove the jagged crystal decanter deep into the exposed gap between his tactical vest and his collarbone. The glass shattered further inside the wound. The man let out a choked, blood-curdling gurgle, dropping his weapon and collapsing heavily onto the floor.
Julian spun around, taking out the remaining two mercenaries with ruthless precision before the echoes of their footsteps could retreat.
The ballroom fell into an eerie, ringing silence, broken only by the hum of emergency sirens wailing in the distant night.
Julian knelt down beside me, checking my blood-spattered hands with frantic concern. "Clara! Are you hit?"
"It’s not my blood," I panted, my voice cold as ice as I pulled Leo back into my embrace. "Where is Arthur?"
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Julian’s radio crackled to life. His perimeter lieutenant’s panicked voice cut through the static: *"Sir! A black armored SUV just breached the western security gate. Cameras caught him... Arthur Sterling is in the back seat!"*
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