Chapter 12 - The Breach Of The Carriage House
The silence of the Bucks County countryside shattered with the roar of a twelve-cylinder diesel engine.
The Romano syndicate’s armored transport, reinforced with an angled steel plow bolted to its front chassis, hit the ornamental iron gates of the estate at fifty miles per hour.
The gate hinges snapped like dry twigs, throwing heavy iron bars forty feet across the cobblestone driveway.
Instantly, the estate’s tactical floodlights snapped on, blinding white halogen beams cutting through the falling sleet.
“Intruders at the main perimeter!” a voice barked over the contractor radio frequencies.
“All units converge on the main circle! Open fire!”
Heavy automatic gunfire erupted from the stone parapets of the main house.
Belt-fed machine guns tore into the armored transport, sparking wildly off the reinforced ballistic steel plating.
Marco returned fire with mounted heavy weapons, turning the estate’s manicured boxwood hedges and ornamental stone fountains into powdered rubble.
While the front courtyard transformed into an apocalyptic thunder of high-caliber warfare, two figures drifted through the shadows of the lower paddock like phantoms.
Vincent and Matteo moved low along the cedar fencing, their suppressed carbines raised, navigating through the blind spots of the thermal surveillance grid.
They reached the rear of the stone carriage house without drawing a single round.
A private contractor stood guard beside the service door, an assault rifle slung across his chest as he nervously watched the tracer rounds lighting up the sky over the front manor.
Matteo did not fire.
He stepped out from behind an oak trunk, closed the six-foot distance in the span of a single heartbeat, and drove a combat knife beneath the contractor’s collarbone with terrifying, practiced finality.
He caught the man’s limp body before the equipment could rattle against the stone, lowering him silently into the mud.
Vincent tested the handle of the heavy wooden door.
It was locked with a modern digital keypad.
Vincent didn’t waste time with electronic picks.
He produced a four-inch block of shaped C4 demolition putty, pressed it against the heavy brass lock mechanism, inserted an electronic blasting cap, and stepped back behind the stone buttress.
He touched two wires together.
THUMP.
The muffled blast blew the door inward in a shower of splintered oak and pulverized mortar.
Vincent cleared the doorway before the dust had settled, his weapon up, clearing corners with mechanical speed.
The ground floor was a vehicle workshop housing vintage luxury automobiles and antique carriages.
At the far end of the workshop, an open wooden staircase led to the residential loft above.
Heavy bootsteps thudded frantically on the upper floorboards.
“Hold the stairs!” a man screamed in a thick military cadence from the landing.
Vincent leveled his barrel at the ceiling, tracking the creaking pine boards above his head.
He squeezed the trigger three times, sending heavy subsonic slugs punching through the floor from below.
A scream of pain followed, accompanied by a rifle crashing onto the wood and a body slumping heavily against the upstairs railing.
Vincent and Matteo bounded up the stairs, clearing the landing with ruthless precision.
In the center of the brightly lit loft room stood the contractor team lead, his sidearm raised toward the door.
Before he could find his sight picture, Matteo broke the trigger twice.
The two rounds took the contractor center-mass, driving him backward over a leather armchair where he collapsed, motionless.
At the far corner of the room, sitting on an antique mahogany chest, was Lily.
She still wore her faded yellow dress, now stained with engine grease, and her oversized yellow rubber dishwashing gloves were pulled high over her forearms.
She was holding a dusty, headless wooden broom she had found in the corner.
Her brown eyes were wide, but she wasn’t screaming.
When she saw Vincent step into the light, his face smeared with carbon and mud, a tiny, watery smile broke across her small face.
“Mr. Vincent!” she chirped, dropping the broken broom onto the carpet.
“I told the loud men with the helmets you were coming.”
Vincent let his weapon fall against its tactical sling.
The iron warlord of Philadelphia dropped to his knees on the rug, his large, trembling hands reaching out to scoop the three-year-old child against his chest.
He buried his face in her hair, feeling the warm, steady thud of her tiny heartbeat against his ribs.
“Did they hurt you, little bird?” he whispered, his voice cracking with an emotion that no man in his syndicate had ever heard him express.
“No,” Lily said, patting his wet shoulder with her rubber glove.
“They had really bad manners, though.”
“They didn't give me any juice, and one man smelled like old cigars.”
Matteo stood at the door, watching his older brother cradle the child, a single tear cutting through the grease on his face.
Then, from the courtyard below, the sound of heavy gunfire began to dwindle, replaced by the crackle of burning brush and the low, menacing hum of diesel engines.
Marco’s voice crackled through Vincent’s earpiece.
“Boss, the outer contractors are neutralized or fleeing across the river.”
“The main house is secured.”
“We found Silvio Romano in the conservatory.”
Vincent pulled back from Lily, looking into her brown eyes.
“Your mother is waiting outside in the big truck, Lily.”
Her eyes lit up with radiant joy.
“Mommy is awake?”
“She is awake,” Vincent promised, standing up and lifting the child into the crook of his arm.
“And she is never going to leave you again.”
He handed the child to Matteo.
“Take her down to Claire,” Vincent commanded quietly.
Matteo looked at his brother, noting the terrible, absolute darkness that had settled back into Vincent’s eyes.
“What about Silvio?” Matteo asked.
Vincent drew his Sig Sauer from its holster, checking the feed ramp with slow, deliberate precision.
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“Silvio has lived seventy-two years in this world,” Vincent said, his voice flat as a frozen lake.
“He has five minutes left.”
