Chapter 7 - Blood in the Snow
The courtyard of the Greenwich estate looked like a combat zone in eastern Europe.
Thick white smoke billowed across the manicured lawns, illuminated by the muzzle flashes of automatic rifles. Four of Damian’s elite guards had pinned down an eight-man assault squad attempting to force the mahogany double doors of the main entrance.
Damian kicked open the heavy oak side doors leading onto the veranda, raising his assault rifle with ruthless precision.
Rat-tat-tat-tat.
Two of the attackers dropped instantly before they could adjust their aim.
“Flank left!” Damian shouted to Elias, who was laying down suppressive fire from behind a stone planter.
Maya crouched beside a marble pillar just inside the doorway, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The noise was deafening—the sharp crack of gunfire, the smell of cordite and burning rubber, the shouts of men fighting for their lives in the freezing snow.
She took a deep breath, pushing the terror down into the dark corners of her mind, exactly as she had trained herself to do during her years in the trauma ward.
Focus, she told herself. Breathe.
A masked operative broke away from the main assault squad, sprinting across the snow-covered lawn directly toward the veranda where Maya was positioned. He raised a submachine gun, his eyes locked on the open doorway.
Maya raised her Smith & Wesson pistol.
She didn’t hesitate. She squeezed the trigger twice.
The first round caught the attacker in the shoulder, spinning him off balance. The second round struck true. He collapsed face-first into the snow, motionless.
Damian, who had been reloading his rifle a few feet away, caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked down at the fallen operative, then up at Maya.
A grim, approving nod passed between them.
“Two more coming through the smoke!” Elias yelled over the roar of gunfire.
Damian pivoted, firing a rapid three-round burst that neutralized one attacker, while Elias’s shotgun finished the second. Within seconds, the gunfire in the courtyard began to taper off, replaced by the crackle of burning debris and the heavy, ragged breathing of the surviving guards.
“Sweep the grounds!” Damian commanded into his comm-link. “Leave no survivors. I want to know who funded this hit.”
As the smoke slowly cleared across the blood-stained snow, a black Mercedes sedan—bullet-riddled and trailing a thick plume of black smoke—came crashing through the shattered iron remains of the side gates, attempting a desperate escape.
Damian didn’t hesitate. He dropped his rifle, sprinted to a parked armored ATV near the veranda, vaulted into the driver’s seat, and fired the engine to life.
“Damian, wait!” Maya shouted, stepping out onto the veranda.
“Stay here!” he called back over the roar of the engine before rocketing across the snow in pursuit of the fleeing vehicle.
The chase lasted less than two minutes.
Damian’s ATV slammed directly into the side panel of the fleeing Mercedes, sending the sedan spinning out of control into a massive oak tree at the edge of the property line.
Damian leaped out of the ATV, his pistol drawn, and yanked the driver’s side door open.
Slumped over the steering wheel, bleeding heavily from a head wound, was Vince Moretti.
Moretti coughed up a spray of blood, his eyes fluttering open as the barrel of Damian’s gun pressed firmly against his forehead.
“Costa...” Moretti choked out, a bloody, pathetic smile twisting his lips. “You think... you think killing me stops it? Aegis... Aegis is just the beginning. The board... the directors... they own the judges, the police, the—”
“They don’t own me,” Damian whispered, his voice darker than the winter night.
May you like
Before Moretti could speak another word, Damian pistol-whipped him unconscious.
The siege of Greenwich was over.
