Chapter 3 - The Severed Rope and the Pursuit Across the Estate
Nora scrambled backward through the smoke, her hands clawing blindly across the hot concrete floor until her fingers brushed against the cold steel of the heavy iron pruning shears.
She didn't hesitate.
She threw herself onto her knees behind Roman, ignoring the blisters bursting across her palms, and slammed the shears against the remaining double-wrapped hemp binding his wrists.
Snap. Snap.
The stubborn fibers finally gave way with a violent twang.
Roman’s arms burst free, snapping forward with explosive velocity.
He didn't rub his chafed, bleeding wrists.
He didn't pause to catch his breath.
In one fluid, terrifying motion, Roman whipped around, grabbed the heavy brass nozzle of the garden hose, and whipped the rubber line like a whip to extinguish a tongue of fire that was about to drop directly onto Nora’s head.
“Out,” Roman commanded, his voice vibrating with lethal intensity.
“Now.”
“My daughter,” Nora gasped, her face streaked with tears and soot.
“They took her, Roman. They have Maisie!”
“I know,” Roman said, his dark eyes flat, cold, and entirely devoid of mercy.
“And whoever took her is going to wish they had stayed inside that shed with the fire.”
Without waiting for her to follow, Roman sprinted out through the burning doorway into the cold Westchester rain.
The downpour hit his blistered skin like needles, but he didn't slow down.
His eyes scanned the open lawn behind the stone fountain, tracking the muddy footprints leading away from the shed toward the dense perimeter woods bordering the estate.
A quarter-mile ahead, the dark-gray figure of the fake groundskeeper was jogging toward an idling, unmarked black utility van parked illegally on a service access road.
Maisie was still thrashing in the man’s grip, her little pink sock dangling limply from her foot as she cried out for her mother.
Roman’s long strides ate up the wet grass with terrifying speed.
He was thirty-eight years old, carrying the physical and psychological scars of a dozen underworld turf wars, yet adrenaline fueled his movements with a supernatural velocity.
The man with Maisie reached the van, hauling open the sliding side door and tossing the terrified child onto the back seat like a sack of grain.
As the man turned to scramble into the driver’s seat, Roman cleared the distance, launching his entire six-foot-two frame through the air in a flying tackle.
They collided with a wet, heavy thud against the side of the van.
Roman’s hands locked around the fake groundskeeper’s throat, slamming the man’s head hard against the metal door frame until a sickening crunch echoed in the damp air.
The man collapsed like a ragdoll into the muddy gravel, unconscious before he even hit the ground.
Roman didn't waste a second checking his pulse.
He vaulted through the open side door of the van, landing heavily on the rubber floorboards of the cargo bay.
“Maisie?” Roman called out, his voice softening instantly as he spotted a small, shaking bundle curled up near a stack of toolboxes.
A pair of tear-filled, soot-smudged eyes looked up from the darkness.
“Mr. Roman?” Maisie whimpered, her lower lip trembling.
“Are the sparkies gone?”
Roman dropped to his knees, his broad hands—raw, bleeding, and blackened with soot—gently lifting the little girl into his arms and pulling her tight against his chest.
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“They’re gone, sweetheart,” Roman murmured, his voice thick with an emotion he hadn't allowed himself to feel in decades.
“You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
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