Chapter 8 - The Midnight Infiltration
The wooden walls of the detached garage splintered violently under a hail of suppressed automatic fire.
Sparks danced across the concrete floor as bullets struck steel anvils, toolboxes, and engine blocks.
Emma clutched her father’s leather notebook tightly against her chest, ducking beneath the heavy iron workbench.
The smoke from the gasoline fire was already growing thick, choking the air with toxic black fumes.
Vincent stood calmly amid the storm of lead, firing three calculated rounds through the shattered window frame.
A muffled scream and a heavy thud from the alley confirmed that his first target had collapsed into the wet weeds.
"Marco, suppress the eastern approach!" Vincent ordered into his throat mic, his voice steady as granite.
"We are exiting through the residential breezeway toward the secondary vehicle!"
Marco’s machine gun answered with a deafening roar from the alleyway, driving the attackers behind their armored vehicles.
Vincent grabbed Emma’s wrist, hauling her to her feet with unstoppable force.
"Stay low, keep your head beneath my shoulders, and run!"
They burst through the burning side door into the pouring rain, the cold water splashing against Emma's scorched cheeks.
Two gunmen in tactical balaclavas charged around the corner of the house, raising short-barreled carbines.
Emma didn't wait for Vincent to fire.
With lightning-fast mechanic's instincts, she grabbed a heavy thirty-pound steel oxygen tank standing by the outdoor welding cart.
She kicked the regulator valve violently with her steel-toe boot, snapping the brass fitting clean off.
The pressurized cylinder erupted like a rocket, hurtling across the muddy patio and slamming directly into the chest of the lead gunman.
The impact broke his ribs with an audible snap, sending him flying backward into his partner and disrupting their line of fire.
Vincent stepped forward without missing a beat, neutralizing both operatives with two rapid shots before they could recover.
He looked down at Emma through the driving rain, genuine shock flickering across his cold eyes.
"Improvised pneumatic weaponry, Miss Hayes?"
"I told you, Mr. Russo," Emma panted, wiping soot and rain from her eyes.
"Machines don't take sides, but they hit very hard when you know where to break them."
"Move to the truck!" Vincent commanded, shielding her body with his own as they sprinted to the armored SUV.
Marco was already behind the wheel of the lead vehicle, slamming the heavy doors shut as incoming rounds pinged harmlessly off the reinforced glass.
"Who were they, Marco?" Vincent demanded as the SUV accelerated through the alley, smashing through a wooden fence to reach the avenue.
"Dominic’s personal security squad from the Calumet depot, Boss," Marco replied, checking his side mirror.
"They had orders to burn the entire property to the ground and eliminate anyone inside."
"Dominic knows Cole didn't make the train to Detroit."
"He's panicking."
Emma checked the leather notebook inside her jacket; the wax paper had protected the pages from both flame and water.
"If Dominic knows he's exposed, he won't wait for the Friday summit," Emma said, her breath catching in her throat.
She turned to Vincent, terror suddenly seizing her chest like an iron vice.
"Maya!" Emma cried out, grabbing Vincent’s sleeve.
"My sister is at your estate!"
"If Dominic knows you're in the city, will he hit the carriage house?"
Vincent pulled out his satellite phone immediately, tapping the secure line to the Lake Forest security gate.
Static crackled through the speaker for five agonizing seconds before Vance’s voice answered, breathless and strained.
"Boss, we have an active perimeter breach at the north wall!"
"A commercial flatbed truck just rammed the iron gate!"
"Six armed men entered the courtyard moving toward the guest quarters!"
Emma felt the blood drain completely from her face.
"No, no, no," she gasped, her hands shaking uncontrollably.
"Maya doesn't know how to fight!"
"Vance!" Vincent barked into the phone with lethal authority.
"Initiate Protocol Delta!"
"Seal the underground bunker beneath the carriage house immediately!"
"I tried, Boss!" Vance shouted over the distant crack of small-arms fire.
"The hydraulic line to the bunker door was severed during the perimeter breach!"
"The mechanical override has to be engaged manually from the subterranean maintenance bay!"
"I'm pinned down in the central server room!"
Emma grabbed the phone straight from Vincent’s hand, her voice screaming over the noise of the engine.
"Vance, listen to me!"
"Where is Maya right now?"
"She's locked inside the carriage house pantry, Miss Hayes!" Vance shouted back.
"The shooters are already on the first floor!"
"They are trying to kick the door down!"
Emma turned to Vincent, her eyes blazing with a feral, protective fury that matched his own darkest instincts.
"How long until we reach the estate?" she demanded.
"Eight minutes if I drive through every red light on the interstate," Vincent answered, stomping his foot to the floorboard.
The massive supercharged V8 engine roared to life, propelling the armored SUV through the storm at over one hundred miles per hour.
Emma gripped the dashboard, her mind racing through the architectural layout of Vincent's estate.
"The hydraulic lines in that subterranean bay connect to the secondary pressure tank behind Bay Three," Emma muttered to herself.
"If the manual valve is stuck, there is an emergency relief release valve located in the courtyard drainage conduit."
"If I can reach that conduit, I can pressurize the bunker door from the outside and lock those bastards out."
Vincent looked at her, his expression grim and deadly.
"You won't have to do it alone, Emma."
"I am going to slaughter every man who set foot on my property tonight."
The SUV tore through the suburban gates of Lake Forest three minutes later, sliding across the wet grass as they breached the estate grounds.
The iron gates lay twisted and smoking from the flatbed truck's impact.
Two enemy vehicles were parked haphazardly in front of the carriage house, their hazard lights flashing through the darkness.
Gunfire rattled from the second-floor windows as the estate's remaining guards returned fire from the main mansion.
Vincent kicked his door open before the SUV had even come to a complete stop, his automatic rifle raised to his shoulder.
"Marco, flank the west veranda!"
"Emma, stay behind the armored door!"
"Like hell I will!" Emma yelled, grabbing a two-foot steel pry bar from the truck’s emergency toolkit.
"That's my sister in there!"
She sprinted through the pouring rain toward the drainage manifold near the carriage house foundation.
Inside the carriage house, the terrifying sound of splintering wood signaled that the pantry door was giving way.
Emma dropped to her knees in the mud, shoving the steel pry bar into the iron grate of the drainage valve.
With all the strength in her body, she wrenched the corroded lever upward ninety degrees.
Deep within the foundation, high-pressure hydraulic fluid surged through the emergency copper conduits with a metallic hiss.
Inside the house, a massive three-inch titanium blast door slid down over the pantry entrance with the force of a falling guillotine.
The heavy blast door slammed shut with a thunderous, earth-shaking boom.
The gunman attempting to breach the pantry recoiled in shock as his assault rifle was severed in half by the descending titanium barrier.
A second later, Vincent stepped through the shattered front entrance like an angel of death.
Three deafening gunshots echoed through the foyer, and the remaining intruders fell dead upon the polished marble floor.
Emma stumbled into the ruined entryway, her clothes drenched in mud and rain, her heart pounding in her throat.
Vincent stood over the fallen attackers, his smoking rifle held at his side.
He turned toward Emma and nodded toward the sealed blast door.
"Your sister is safe, Emma."
"The bunker held."
Emma collapsed against the wall, sliding down to the cold floor, letting the tears finally fall as she clutched her father’s book against her chest.
Vincent walked over, kneeling beside her in the ruined foyer, his dark eyes softer than she had ever seen them before.
May you like
"Nobody touches what belongs to me," Vincent said softly, his voice trembling with an emotion he rarely permitted himself to feel.
"And nobody touches you."
