Chapter 3 - Roman processed the information almost instantly.
“You’re sure?”
“I sign the maintenance checks, Roman. Yes, I’m sure.”
The lights flickered.
Then they died.
Gray storm light filtered through the broken windows.
“She’s right,” Gabriel said. “They just cut the main line.”
“Where do we go?”
Declan was not asking Roman.
He was asking Maeve.
“The old Prohibition tunnels. Behind the industrial laundry machines. The door is mechanical, heavy iron. It leads out to the cliffs. From there, we can circle back to the tree line where the security team keeps the perimeter ATVs.”
“Move,” Roman ordered.
They moved as one unit.
Declan went first, his body shielding the hallway. He fired 2 precise shots and dropped a mercenary rounding the corner.
Maeve scrambled behind him.
Her boots slipped on bloody marble before Gabriel caught her shoulder and steadied her.
Roman covered the rear.
They rushed down the servants’ stairs into darkness smelling of damp concrete and bleach.
Above them came footsteps and shouting.
The house was being torn apart.
They reached the laundry room.
Maeve pushed past Declan and ran toward the industrial dryers.
She forced her hands into the dusty space between a machine and the wall, searching for the heavy iron latch Mrs. Hess had casually mentioned during a walk-through weeks earlier.
Her fingers found cold metal.
She pulled.
Nothing.
Rust and decades of disuse held it in place.
“Move.”
Declan wrapped his bloody hands around the lever above hers, planted his boots against the concrete wall, and pulled with a violent roar.
Rust shrieked.
The heavy iron door cracked open.
Beyond it was a narrow black tunnel smelling of salt and decay.
“Go.”
Gabriel pushed Maeve toward it.
The basement door above burst open.
3 men in tactical equipment poured onto the landing with rifles sweeping the room.
“Roman, down!”
The basement exploded with muzzle flashes.
In the enclosed concrete space, the gunfire became physically painful.
Maeve fell backward into the tunnel.
Gabriel moved with terrifying fluidity.
He did not seek cover.
He stepped into the line of fire, raised his pistol, and fired 3 times in less than a second.
3 bodies fell onto the stairs.
A 4th man dropped to one knee.
His rifle tracked Gabriel.
“Gabriel!”
Roman stepped in front of his brother.
The rifle fired.
The impact spun Roman around and threw him against the concrete wall.
Declan answered with sustained gunfire.
The 4th attacker fell.
Silence returned.
Maeve scrambled from the tunnel, scraping her knees against the concrete.
“Roman.”
Roman slid down the wall with one hand pressed against his left shoulder.
Blood pulsed through his fingers and spread across his white shirt.
His skin was already turning pale.
Gabriel caught him beneath the arms.
“Roman. Hey, look at me.”
“It’s through and through,” Roman forced out through clenched teeth. He looked at his blood-covered hand. “Missed the artery, I think.”
“Get him inside,” Maeve ordered.
The panic disappeared.
Years of keeping Chloe alive through medical emergencies took control.
Declan and Gabriel pulled Roman into the tunnel.
Maeve dragged the iron door closed and threw the rusted deadbolt just as heavy footsteps reached the laundry room.
Darkness swallowed them.
The tunnel was freezing. Atlantic salt filled the air.
Gabriel produced a tactical flashlight.
Its narrow beam revealed wet stone walls and Roman sitting against the curved tunnel, his head tipped backward.
Gabriel pressed a strip torn from his shirt against the wound.
His hands were shaking.
Declan guarded the door with his gun raised while muffled shouting and pounding came from the other side.
“The iron will hold. But we can’t stay here. The cold will put him in shock.”
Maeve dropped beside Roman.
She pushed Gabriel’s hands away.
“Let me.”
She unbuttoned Roman’s soaked shirt and peeled the material from the injury.
The wound was ugly, a jagged tear and hole below the collarbone, but the blood flowed steadily rather than spurting with the bright pulse of a severed artery.
Maeve removed her thick knit sweater, leaving herself in a thin long-sleeved thermal.
She rolled the wool into a pad and drove it against the wound, putting her body weight behind the pressure.
Roman groaned and opened his eyes.
For the first time, the cold, untouchable head of the Falcone Syndicate looked completely stripped of his defenses.
“I’m ruining your sweater,” he rasped, a faint smirk appearing despite his pale face.
“I manage the accounts. I’ll expense it. Keep breathing, Roman.”
Maeve looked at Gabriel.
“Hold this exactly like this. Don’t let up.”
Gabriel replaced her hands.
Maeve stood and stared into the long darkness of the tunnel.
“We have to walk. There’s a medical cache in the security ATVs by the tree line. We get him there, we patch him, and we use the radios to call Lorenzo’s cleanup crew.”
Declan looked at her.
She was shivering in the damp cold, her face and hands covered in Roman’s blood and her hair filled with plaster dust.
She was not crying.
She was doing the math.
Calculating their odds of survival exactly as she had done on her first day.
“You should have left,” Declan said quietly. “When Roman gave you the keys, you should have walked out.”
Maeve looked at the 3 brothers.
Monsters.
Killers.
Men who owned the city.
Now they were battered, bleeding, and hiding inside a wet tunnel, looking at her as though she were the only light remaining.
“You guys would starve without me.”
She looked at Roman.
“Help him up.”
The walk took 20 minutes.
It felt like 10 hours.
By the time they reached the iron grate opening onto the cliffside, the storm had broken, leaving a cold, pale-gray sky.
The security ATVs remained hidden beneath camouflage netting among the pines.
Maeve found the trauma kit.
She worked with practiced brutality, packing Roman’s wound with hemostatic gauze and wrapping it tightly.
Lorenzo’s crew arrived 1 hour later in 3 unmarked black vans.
They were transported to a secure private safe house in the city.
Only then did the adrenaline begin to collapse.
The safe house was a high-rise penthouse.
Sterile.
Quiet.
Safe.
Roman lay sedated in the master bedroom after a private surgeon stitched his wound.
Declan slept on a leather sofa, completely exhausted.
Maeve stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked over the wet city.
Her hands were finally clean.
She could still feel the phantom stickiness of Roman’s blood.
Soft footsteps approached.
Gabriel stopped beside her without speaking and handed her a steaming mug of black coffee.
Maeve took it and let the heat settle into her cold palms.
“They’re gone,” Gabriel said. “Marco, the mercenaries. Lorenzo’s people cleared the estate. It’s over.”
Maeve drank.
The coffee was bitter and strong.
“Who’s going to clean the blood out of the marble? It stains if you let it set.”
Gabriel laughed.
The sound was soft and genuine, without any of his old sharpness.
“We’ll hire a crew.”
He turned toward her.
His eyes were warm and open, carrying the weight of an unspoken promise.
“You’re never scrubbing another floor, Maeve.”
Maeve looked up at him.
She thought about her old apartment and its freezing radiator. She remembered the crushing weight of being completely alone in a world designed to break her.
She was not alone anymore.
She had entered a fortress filled with apex predators armed with little more than a cast-iron skillet and an absolute refusal to become a victim.
Somewhere along the way, she had built a family.
A violent, deeply fractured, fiercely protective family.
“Good,” Maeve whispered, leaning slightly into Gabriel’s touch. “Because I’m cooking potatoes tomorrow, and the skillet is heavy.”
May you like
Gabriel smiled.
“We’ll carry it for you.”
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