Chapter 5 - The Escape Through the River
The subterranean garage was a warzone.
Flames licked up the concrete pillars where an armored transport had been detonated by a remote charge. Thick black smoke rolled toward the ceiling, choking the air and turning the amber emergency lights into bloody smears through the haze.
Marco was pinned behind a concrete pillar, laying down heavy suppressive fire with a submachine gun against three operatives advancing from the service tunnel.
“Boss! They’ve got the exits blocked!” Marco yelled over the deafening rattle of gunfire.
Daario didn’t hesitate. He pushed Margaret and Sophia into the back of a rugged, unarmored Ford Raptor pickup truck parked near the maintenance bay—a vehicle meant for hauling firewood and supplies, completely unremarkable compared to the Maybach.
Margaret pulled Sophia onto the floorboards of the back seat, covering the child with a heavy wool blanket. “Daario, we can’t outrun them in this!”
“We aren’t going up the drive,” Daario shouted over the roar of the idling V8 engine. He leaped into the driver’s seat, slamming the gearshift into four-wheel drive. “Hold on!”
“What are you—”
She didn’t get to finish the question.
Daario floored the accelerator. The heavy truck surged forward, smashing directly through the reinforced wooden maintenance gates that led down to the private boat launch on the riverbank.
With a thunderous crash, the Raptor launched off the gravel embankment and plunged straight down into the dark, freezing waters of the river.
Water slammed against the windshield in a blinding wall of white spray. Margaret screamed, throwing her arms over Sophia as the heavy truck sank nose-first into the current before buoyancy took over and the vehicle bobbed to the surface, its massive tires churning the water into foam.
“Doors up! Swim!” Daario yelled, kicking his door open as icy river water flooded the cab.
He reached into the back seat, scooped Sophia into one arm, and grabbed Margaret’s hand with the other, hauling them out into the freezing current just as the sinking truck slipped beneath the dark water and disappeared.
The current was brutal, biting cold and fast-moving, but Daario was a strong swimmer, cutting through the black water with powerful, rhythmic strokes while keeping Sophia elevated above the surface. Margaret swam desperately beside them, her teeth chattering so hard she could barely breathe, her muscles burning from the shock of the cold.
Fifty yards downstream, hidden beneath a thick canopy of weeping willows that overhung the rocky bank, sat a small, rusted aluminum fishing boat tied to a wooden piling.
“Get in!” Daario gasped, hauling Sophia over the gunwale of the boat before lifting Margaret inside.
He scrambled in after them, grabbed the pull-cord of the small outboard motor, and yanked it once, twice—on the third pull, the engine coughed, sputtered, and roared to life, kicking up a rooster tail of spray as it surged away from the burning estate behind them.
As they rounded a bend in the river, Margaret looked back.
High on the cliff above, the River Road estate was a roaring bonfire, flames illuminating the dark pine forest and painting the night sky in shades of angry orange and black.
She shivered violently, wrapped in a coarse wool blanket Daario had pulled from under the boat’s bench seat. Sophia had finally cried herself to sleep against Margaret’s chest, exhausted by terror and cold.
Daario sat at the stern, steering the small boat through the winding, forgotten channels of the upper river, his face illuminated only by the green glow of the compass.
Margaret crawled across the metal floorboards until she was kneeling right beside him. Water dripped from his dark hair, matting it against his forehead. His clothes were soaked, heavy with river silt.
“Where are we going?” she asked quietly, her voice barely audible over the drone of the motor.
“An old hunting cabin,” Daario replied without looking at her. “Ten miles north. No electricity, no phones, no satellite footprint. We’ll be ghosts there until dawn.”
Margaret reached out, placing her hand gently over his knuckles where they gripped the metal tiller handle. His skin was like ice, but when he felt her touch, his fingers slowly relaxed, turning to clasp hers back.
“You lost everything tonight,” she whispered. “Your home. Your father’s legacy.”
Daario turned his head, his dark, piercing eyes meeting hers in the gloom.
May you like
“My father built that house on blood and stolen money,” Daario said, his voice flat. “And I lost my home the day they put Isabella in the ground. Tonight... I didn't lose anything that mattered.”
Margaret looked down at their joined hands, feeling a strange, terrifying warmth bloom in her chest amidst the freezing night air.
