Chapter 9 - The Siege of the Western Wall
The satellite call cut off with a burst of static that sounded like a death rattle.
The warning hung in the sealed bedroom, sharp, lethal, and absolute.
Marco Moretti, the ruthless heir to the southern Chicago syndicate, was arriving with sixty armed men to wipe Mercer Manor off the map while Liam was crippled and Leo was three thousand miles away in Boston.
Downstairs, the estate’s secondary alarm system began to wail, a low, pulsing klaxon that vibrated through the floorboards.
The perimeter security team was already moving into defensive positions, the sound of heavy steel gates slamming shut and armored vehicles revving in the courtyard below echoing through the stone walls.
Liam Mercer threw back the bedsheets, his face set in a terrifying mask of cold, tactical fury.
“Clara, get into the reinforced dressing room,” he commanded, reaching for the bedside panic button that sealed the third-floor corridors.
“The inner vault behind the mirror is lined with six-inch ballistic steel.”
“Lock it from the inside and do not open it for anyone except Leo or myself.”
“I am not getting into a closet while this house turns into a slaughterhouse,” I snapped, my adrenaline surging to an absolute peak.
“You can barely stand on your left foot!”
“If you try to fight on that fractured tibia, the bone will penetrate the femoral artery, and you will bleed out in forty seconds!”
“Then hand me my weapon from the desk drawer,” he roared, his voice booming with the terrifying thunder of a commander facing his final stand.
“I will die on my feet behind a barrel before I let Marco Moretti butcher me like a hog in a bed!”
I didn't fetch his gun.
Instead, I sprinted across the bedroom to the large walk-in closet where the emergency medical trauma kits were stored alongside tactical gear.
I bypassed the firearms and grabbed a heavy-duty, carbon-fiber tactical splint, three rolls of reinforced medical casting tape, and an aluminum rigid leg brace.
I rushed back to the bed, dropping to my knees beside his pinned right leg.
“What the hell are you doing?” Liam demanded, trying to shove my hands away as he reached for the holster hanging from the bedpost.
“Hold still, you arrogant bastard!” I shouted directly into his face, slapping his hands away with fierce authority.
“If you’re going to fight for your life, I’m locking this external fixator into a rigid external carbon bridge!”
“It will hold the bone fragments immobile even if you put sixty percent of your weight on it!”
“It will hurt like hell, but it will keep you standing!”
Liam froze, his blue eyes widening in utter astonishment as my hands flew over his leg.
I wrapped the carbon splint around the steel pins, binding the rigid struts directly to his thigh and calf with rapid, high-tension fiberglass tape.
Every wrap sent waves of excruciating, grinding pressure through his fractured bone, but Liam didn't cry out.
He locked his teeth together, his jaw muscles bulging like cords of iron, his fingernails digging into the mattress until the fabric ripped.
“Pull it tighter,” he hissed through clenched teeth, sweat pouring down his hollowed cheeks.
“Tighter, Clara!”
I pulled the final strap with all my strength, securing the high-impact buckles until his right leg was encased in an impenetrable, rigid exoskeleton of carbon and steel.
He couldn't bend the knee, but the fractured tibia was now completely stabilized against external torque.
I stood up, panting, wiping hair from my sweaty forehead, and grabbed a loaded tactical shotgun from the credenza, thrusting the weapon into his uninjured left arm.
“Now,” I said, my chest heaving as the distant thud of explosive breaching charges detonated against the southern gatehouse.
“You can stand.”
Liam looked down at his locked limb, then looked up at me with an expression of ferocious, untamed admiration that set my blood ablaze.
He swung his legs off the bed.
He planted the carbon-encased foot onto the timber floor, put his weight onto the splint, and stood up.
The pain was obviously monstrous; his breath hitched, and his skin turned gray for a fraction of a second, but the rigid carbon bridge held.
He was on his feet.
Six feet two inches of lethal, furious mob royalty, armed and standing under his own power for the first time in five weeks.
The heavy gunfire downstairs erupted into an absolute storm.
Automatic rifles, fragmentation grenades, and the shattering of heavy glass roared through the lower floors as Moretti’s strike team breached the grand foyer.
The Mercer household guards were fighting bravely, but they were hopelessly outnumbered, their defensive perimeter crumbling inward toward the grand staircase.
Liam racked the slide of the shotgun with a clean, brutal mechanical clack.
“Clara, get behind me.”
“I’m right here,” I whispered, picking up a heavy stainless-steel trauma scalpel and a spare magazine from the nightstand, my hands steady despite the terror threatening to consume my mind.
The heavy oak doors of the master bedroom shuddered violently as a breaching ram struck the lock from the outside.
Splinters flew inward.
A second strike tore the brass hinges from the frame, and the iron-reinforced door burst inward with a deafening crash.
Two masked Moretti gunmen burst into the entryway, their assault rifles raised to sweep the room.
Liam Mercer didn't hesitate.
He raised the shotgun with his left arm, braced the stock against his chest, and fired two massive, thunderous blasts that illuminated the room in brilliant orange flashes.
The concussive roar in the enclosed space was deafening.
The two gunmen were thrown backward into the corridor like broken ragdolls, their weapons clattering across the hardwood floor.
“Push forward,” Liam growled, limping heavily on his carbon-locked leg, using the doorway frame for balance as he advanced into the smoke-filled hallway.
From the top of the grand balustrade, the scene below was pure hell.
The grand chandelier lay shattered in ten thousand pieces across the marble floor of the foyer, fires burning in the antique rugs, bullet holes perforating the oil paintings.
A dozen Mercer guards lay fallen around the sweeping staircase, while Marco Moretti’s black-clad mercenaries moved methodically through the smoke, executing the wounded.
At the center of the foyer stood Marco Moretti himself.
He wore an immaculate camel-hair coat, his dark hair slicked back, a silver-plated automatic pistol dangling casually from his right hand.
“Liam!” Marco shouted up into the vaulted ceiling, his mocking voice echoing over the crackle of burning furniture.
“Come out, little brother!”
“Your docks belong to me!”
“Your family council has already signed the treaty!”
“Come down and die like a man, or I’ll burn this entire manor down with you trapped inside your bed!”
Liam Mercer stepped up to the marble balustrade, his massive silhouette emerging from the drifting gunsmoke at the top of the stairs.
The sight of Liam standing upright, unassisted, with a shotgun leveled directly at the foyer, struck the Moretti gunmen like an electric shock.
Marco Moretti’s smug, arrogant smile vanished instantly, replaced by a look of sheer, unadulterated terror.
“You...” Marco stammered, taking an involuntary step backward across the bloody marble.
“You’re dead... Vincent said your leg was gangrenous... you were supposed to be rotting in the dark!”
Liam racked another heavy shell into the chamber, the metallic sound ringing with the absolute finality of an executioner's bell.
May you like
“Vincent was mistaken, Marco,” Liam said, his voice dropping into the vast, echoing foyer like a sentence of divine damnation.
“And so were you.”
