Chapter 9 - The Midnight Standoff
The main foyer of Blackwood Manor looked like a war zone.
Two leaded glass windows had been completely blown inward, their shattered fragments covering the Persian rugs like artificial frost.
The air was thick with the acrid stench of cordite, tear gas, and burning upholstery.
Natalie moved along the shadows of the eastern wall, keeping low, holding the pistol with both hands just as Marcus had instructed.
Outside, the heavy rain had turned the circular cobblestone driveway into a slick, reflective mirror.
Two black vehicles sat idling with their high beams on, illuminating the front lawn in blinding, harsh light.
In the center of the driveway stood Damian DeLuca.
He was alone.
His tactical vest was gone, his black shirt torn across the ribs, bleeding freely from a deep laceration along his side.
He held an empty shotgun by the barrel, using it almost like a cane to balance himself against the driving rain.
Surrounding him were four men in heavy rain slickers.
At the center of the group stood a stocky, grey-haired man wearing an Italian wool coat, smoking a thick cigar beneath an umbrella held by a bodyguard.
Salvatore Moretti.
“You fought like an animal, Damian,” Moretti’s gravelly voice carried over the sound of the falling rain.
“I’ll give your old man credit for one thing: he raised you to die on your feet.”
Damian spit a mouthful of blood onto the cobblestones.
He didn’t drop his head.
He didn’t beg.
“You came to my home, Salvatore,” Damian’s baritone was hoarse, but it held the steady weight of an executioner.
“You brought guns into my daughter's bedroom.”
Moretti chuckled, taking a slow puff of his cigar.
“Your daughter is leverage, Damian. Business is business. You strangled my shipping lines in Gary. You bought the dock unions out from under me. Did you think I was going to let you starve my family while you hid your little broken girl in a castle?”
Moretti signaled to his lead bodyguard—a massive man with a scarred neck who raised a suppressed pistol, aiming it directly at Damian’s forehead.
“Where is the girl, Damian? Give her to me, and I’ll leave you enough blood to reach a hospital. Refuse, and I’ll find her myself after I paint this driveway with your brains.”
Damian slowly let the empty shotgun slip from his fingers.
It clattered against the wet stones.
“She isn't here,” Damian lied smoothly.
“Marcus evacuated her through the lake tunnel twenty minutes ago. She’s already across the state line.”
Moretti’s smile vanished.
His eyes narrowed into slits of pure fury.
“Then you’re completely useless to me.”
Moretti nodded to the gunman.
“Put him down.”
The gunman tightened his finger on the trigger.
BANG.
A gunshot shattered the rain.
It didn't come from Moretti’s men.
The heavy glass fixture of the lead vehicle’s high beam exploded into a thousand glittering shards.
The bright, blinding light vanished, plunging the driveway into confusing, shadowy darkness.
The gunman flinched, his shot going wide, chipping the stone two inches from Damian’s boot.
“Sniper!” one of Moretti’s men yelled, scrambling behind the armored door of the sedan.
From the shattered archway of the front entrance, Natalie stepped into the rain.
Her clothes were soaked in seconds.
Her dark hair was plastered against her forehead.
Her hands were shaking with violent adrenaline, but she held the pistol leveled with both arms, aiming directly at the remaining vehicle’s radiator.
BANG. BANG.
She fired two rounds into the engine block, sending a hissing cloud of steam erupting from the grille.
She wasn't trying to be an assassin.
She was creating sensory chaos.
“Damian, down!” Natalie screamed.
Damian didn’t hesitate.
Trained by a lifetime of violence, he dropped flat against the wet cobblestones the instant he heard her voice.
A deafening siren suddenly echoed from the perimeter gates.
Not police sirens.
The industrial foghorn sirens from the DeLuca marine freight docks, rigged into the estate’s secondary alarm system, began to wail at one hundred and twenty decibels.
The sound was paralyzing.
Moretti’s men clutched their ears, their vision obscured by steam and blinding strobe alarms flashing from the manor’s eaves.
In the confusion, Damian surged from the ground like a panther.
He closed the distance to Moretti’s lead gunman in half a second, his combat knife flashing in the strobe light.
The man collapsed with a severed tendon.
Damian seized the fallen man’s submachine gun, spinning on his heel.
The gunfire that followed was clinical, precise, and ruthless.
Within ten seconds, Moretti’s remaining three bodyguards were lying motionless on the cobblestones.
Salvatore Moretti stood alone beneath his umbrella, his cigar dropped into a puddle, his face frozen in utter, disbelieving horror.
Damian walked slowly through the steam, stopping two feet from the aging don.
He leveled the barrel of the weapon directly between Moretti’s eyes.
“You forgot one thing, Salvatore,” Damian whispered, the rain washing the blood from his scarred jaw.
Moretti swallowed dryly, his hands trembling as he dropped the umbrella.
“Damian... we can make a deal. The docks... take the docks...”
May you like
“You forgot that in this house,” Damian said, his voice cutting through the wailing sirens, “even the women are deadlier than your soldiers.”
Damian pulled the trigger.
