Chapter 8 - The Siege
The sound of shattering glass was swallowed instantly by the deafening roar of automatic gunfire.
"DOWN!" Dominic roared.
He threw his massive body over mine, slamming me flat against the marble stairs just as a hail of high-caliber rounds shredded the mahogany paneling above our heads. Plaster rained down like snow. Splinters flew like shrapnel.
"Dominic!" Isabella screamed from the drawing room.
"Stay down, Ma!" Dominic yelled back.
He reached beneath his jacket, pulling the Sig Sauer from his shoulder holster. In one fluid, violent motion, he dragged me by the arm toward the shelter of the reinforced archway beneath the grand staircase.
"Enzo!" Dominic barked into his lapel comm. "Report!"
Static hissed through the speaker, followed by the sound of rapid, chaotic gunfire. *"They breached the perimeter, Boss! Victor Costa didn't wait! He brought thirty mercenaries! They cut the power to the outer grid—they’re coming through the gardens!"*
"Fall back to the interior! Lock down the panic room in the cellar!" Dominic ordered, his eyes darting across the smoke-filled foyer.
Another burst of gunfire ripped through the entrance doors. The heavy oak splintered, and two men in tactical gear and night-vision goggles breached the threshold, their rifles sweeping the room.
Dominic didn't hesitate. He leaned out from behind the stone pillar, fired twice with terrifying precision, and both men collapsed to the floor before their weapons could clear the entryway.
I was pressed against the cold stone, hyperventilating, my hands clutching my aching chest. The trauma of the ballroom was flooding back—the screaming, the smell of cordite, the blinding flash of muzzles.
"Tessa," Dominic said, grabbing my face between his bloodstained hands, forcing me to look at him. "Listen to me. You need to get to the drawing room. Take my mother to the wine cellar. There's a steel blast door behind the third rack. Get inside and bolt it from the interior."
"What about you?" I cried, my fingers digging into his shirt.
"I’m going to buy you time."
"Dominic, there are thirty of them!"
A dark, feral grin touched his lips—the smile of a predator that had finally been cornered and was ready to tear the world apart.
"They made a mistake coming into my house," he said.
He leaned down and kissed me. It wasn't the tender brush against my scar from days ago. It was a hard, possessive, desperate collision of lips that tasted of blood, gunpowder, and adrenaline. It stole the breath from my bruised lungs, igniting every nerve ending in my body.
"Go," he ordered, pulling away. "Now!"
He broke cover, firing relentlessly into the smoke, drawing the incoming fire toward the east wing.
I didn't let the terror paralyze me. I scrambled on my hands and knees across the marble floor, glass slicing through my palms, until I reached the drawing room. Isabella was huddled behind a heavy velvet sofa, clutching a small snub-nosed revolver with trembling hands.
"Tessa!" she gasped. "Where is he?"
"Drawing them away!" I choked out, grabbing her arm. "The cellar! We have to go now!"
Together, we stumbled through the service corridor behind the kitchen. The mansion was echoing with gunfire, shouting, and the sickening thud of falling bodies. Dominic's soldiers were engaging the strike team room by room, turning the historic estate into an abattoir.
We reached the heavy wooden door leading down to the cellar. Isabella threw it open, and we tumbled down the stone steps into the cool, dark subterranean air.
The wine cellar was massive, lined with thousands of dusty vintage bottles resting in wrought-iron racks. At the far end stood the reinforced steel vault door Dominic had spoken of.
"Hurry!" Isabella urged, her breathing ragged as she reached for the electronic keypad.
Before she could punch in the code, heavy footsteps echoed down the stone staircase behind us.
We froze.
Stepping out of the darkness at the base of the stairs was Victor Costa.
His face was wrapped in bloody bandages, his eyes wild and feverish with madness. In his hand, he held a sleek submachine gun, the barrel still smoking.
"Well, well," Costa rasped, his voice dripping with venomous triumph. "The murderer and the martyr. Tucked away like rats in a basement."
Isabella immediately stepped in front of me, raising her small revolver with both hands. "Drop it, Victor. You're dead the second Dominic comes down those stairs."
Costa laughed—a wet, hacking sound. "Dominic is pinned in the library by six of my best men. He’s dying, Isabella. Just like your husband died. Just like Marcus Vance died."
He raised the barrel of his weapon, aiming directly at Isabella's chest.
"Seven bullets couldn't do it at the ballroom," Costa sneered, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Let's see if thirty does the trick."
Time slowed down.
I looked at Isabella’s trembling back. The woman who had signed my father’s execution order. The woman whose sins had ruined my family and turned my life into a living nightmare.
Every rational instinct in my body screamed at me to step aside. To let the monsters destroy each other. To let her pay the debt.
Then I remembered Dominic kneeling at my feet.
I remembered him kissing my scar.
I remembered him saying, *You told death to go to hell.*
I didn't throw myself in front of her this time.
May you like
I lunged forward, grabbed a heavy, unyielding magnum of champagne from the nearest rack, and with every ounce of strength remaining in my shattered, stitched-together body, I swung it like a baseball bat directly into the side of Victor Costa's knee.
***
