Chapter 6 - Fire and Bloodline
The mercenary shrieked, dropping the weapon as Dominic’s suppressed carbine barked from the doorway, dropping the shooter permanently onto the concrete.
I lunged forward, sliding across the damp floor to the cage. My tactical shears sliced through the heavy duct tape around Leo’s small wrists and ankles in three violent strokes. Emma threw herself into the cage, gathering Leo into her arms, pressing her tear-streaked face against his dark curls.
“I’ve got you, my baby,” she wept, kissing his cheeks, his forehead, his small bruised hands. “Mommy is here! You’re safe!”
Leo wrapped his little arms around her neck with all his strength, sobbing into her shoulder. “Mommy… the bad men said you were never coming back!”
“I will always come back for you,” she whispered fiercely.
The digital demolition timer on the chair gave a high-pitched, three-tone chirp. The display flashed: **00:00:45**.
“Thermite failsafe activated!” Dominic shouted. “The whole sub-level is going to melt!”
I reached down, scooping both Emma and Leo into my arms. I hurled my body toward the exit corridor as the first incendiary brick detonated with a blinding, four-thousand-degree white flash behind us. A tidal wave of superheated gas and smoke roared down the concrete tunnel.
I threw my heavy ballistic coat over Emma and Leo, taking the concussive heat against my own back as we scrambled up the limestone steps into the freezing night air. Behind us, the quarry bunker collapsed in a muffled roar of dust and subterranean fire, sinking into the earth.
We collapsed onto the wet gravel of the quarry pit, gasping for the clean winter rain. Leo looked up from Emma’s arms, his wide blue eyes staring straight into my scarred face. He reached out with a tiny, trembling finger and touched the cleft in my chin.
“Are you Uncle Damien?” the boy asked in a soft, awe-filled whisper. “Daddy showed me your picture in his Bible. He said you were the strongest lion in the whole world.”
The words struck my soul with the force of a divine revelation. Tears—hot, searing tears that I hadn’t permitted myself to shed since my brother’s death—burned down my cheeks. I knelt beside them in the mud, pulling both Emma and Gabriel’s son against my chest.
“I’m your Uncle Damien, Leo,” I whispered against his soft hair. “And as long as I have breath in my body, no one will ever touch you again.”
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Dominic ran up the gravel embankment, his satellite radio pressed to his ear, his face grim. “Boss! Priority alert from Chicago! Senator Sterling’s private tactical team just breached the Drake Hotel wine vault! They’ve extracted Vanessa, and they’ve barricaded themselves inside the 50th floor of Blackwood Tower to burn the corporate archives before the feds arrive!”
I stood up in the rain, my eyes burning with the fury of a thousand storms. “Get the boy into the armored cabin. Tonight, the Sterling family answers for every drop of Blackwood blood.”
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