Chapter 6 - The Blood in the East Wing
The corridor of the east wing looked like a war zone.
Thick white plumes of drywall dust hung in the air like winter fog, mixing with the sharp, acrid smell of burnt gunpowder and smoking copper wiring. Overhead, the emergency sprinkler system had been triggered, spraying freezing water across the antique runners and turning the Persian rugs into slippery red swamps.
PFT-PFT-PFT.
Silenced submachine gun fire stuttered from the direction of the master nursery.
I pressed my back against the damp plaster wall, my fingers white around the cold iron shaft of the fireplace poker, my breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. My nurse’s instinct—the survival training drilled into me during active shooter drills at the county hospital—took over every logical function of my brain. Low profile. Cover and concealment. Watch the cross-breezes.
I crept around the corner toward Elena’s suite.
Two men in black tactical windbreakers and Kevlar helmets lay sprawled across the marble floor near the double doors, motionless in expanding pools of dark, viscous blood.
Standing over them, his right arm pressed tightly against his ribs where a dark crimson stain was rapidly spreading across the white linen of his shirt, was Marco Bianchi.
His Heckler & Koch lay ten feet away, its magazine empty, his breath coming in whistling, ragged gasps as he tried to staunch the flow of blood with his bare palm.
"Marco!" I gasped, dropping the fireplace poker and rushing to his side, sliding onto the wet marble beside him.
"Stay back, Claire," Marco coughed, a bubble of bright red blood bursting at the corner of his mouth. "The... the third man... went into the nursery. He’s got a breaching charge on the door."
"Where is Dominic?" I demanded, tearing a strip of fabric from the hem of my smock to apply a direct pressure bandage to his shoulder wound.
"He's... he's clearing the ground floor," Marco wheezed, his eyes rolling back toward the ceiling. "They came through the wine cellar... it was an inside job... the new security chief..."
Before he could finish, a deafening explosion ripped through the end of the hallway.
BOOM.
The heavy mahogany doors of Elena’s suite blew outward in a shower of splintered wood and shredded insulation, the concussion wave knocking me flat onto my back against the wet runner.
Through the clearing smoke stepped a man in a black tactical mask, holding a short-barreled assault rifle in one hand and dragging a terrified, white-faced Mrs. Gable by the collar of her cardigan with the other.
"Don't move!" the mercenary shouted, pressing the barrel of his rifle against the elderly housekeeper’s temple. "Drop the weapon! All units, drop the weapons or the old bitch takes a forty-grain hollow-point right through her ear!"
I froze.
From inside the ruined doorway of the nursery, Elena Moretti sat in her motorized wheelchair, her face carved from cold, unyielding stone. She didn't scream. She didn't cower. She looked at the masked man with the absolute, blistering contempt of an empress staring at a rebellious slave.
"You're making a catastrophic mistake, son," Elena said, her voice dry, raspy, but carrying an ancient, terrifying authority that made the mercenary’s hands tremble. "You think you're holding a hostage. But in three seconds... the man who owns this zip code is going to walk around that corner."
The mercenary laughed—a harsh, nervous sound beneath his tactical mask. "Old lady, the Don is pinned down in the courtyard by my sniper team—"
"I'm not in the courtyard," a voice murmured from the shadows behind him.
The temperature in the hallway seemed to drop twenty degrees.
The mercenary started to turn his head—
CRACK.
The sound of a single, custom-milled .45 ACP round fired from a suppressed Kimber pistol was softer than a church door closing, but the impact was absolute.
A red mist bloomed across the pristine white wainscoting as the mercenary’s helmet spun off his head, his lifeless body collapsing onto the marble floor like a severed marionette.
Mrs. Gable fell forward onto her knees, gasping for air, clutching her throat, sobbing uncontrollably as she looked up at the man standing ten feet away in the smoke.
Dominic Moretti stood with his right arm extended, the barrel of his smoking pistol trailing a thin gray wisp of gun oil into the damp air. His charcoal suit was torn at the shoulder, his face smeared with soot and drywall dust, his slate-gray eyes burning with the cold, absolute fires of hell.
He didn't look at Mrs. Gable.
He didn't look at Marco, who was bleeding out on the floor.
He looked at me, kneeling beside his bleeding enforcer, my hands stained with red, my breath hitching in my chest.
"Are you hurt, Claire?" he asked.
His voice was terrifyingly calm.
"I'm... I'm fine," I choked out, my fingers pressing harder against Marco’s wound to stem the arterial spray. "Help me with Marco! He’s going into hemorrhagic shock!"
Dominic holstered his pistol, dropped to his knees beside us with terrifying speed, and pressed his own hand over mine, sealing the pressure bandage with forty pounds of dead, unbreakable leverage.
"Call Dr. Mercer, Claire," Dominic commanded, his eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that burned away every shadow in the hall.
May you like
"Tell him the war is over.
And my house is clean."
