Chapter 4 - Blood and Water
The air inside the storm tunnel was thick with mud and decayed leaves, but it was moving—which meant it opened to the outside world.
Damian carried Camila on his back, her tiny arms locked tight around his neck as he crouched low, wading through six inches of freezing drainage water. Every few steps, the sound of muffled construction work—the thud of heavy boots and the scraping of shovels—vibrated through the earth above them from the kitchen area.
After ten minutes of brutal, grueling movement through the pitch-black pipe, the tunnel sloped steeply upward, ending at a rusted iron grate choked with wild thickets and brambles at the base of the river bluff.
Damian threw his weight against the iron grate once, twice, three times, until the rusted welds snapped. He tumbled out onto the damp earth beneath the night sky, pulling Camila into his arms as they hit the grass.
He lay there for three seconds, gasping in the cool, sweet night air, staring up at the stars. Then he sat up, his mind clearing like smoke in a gale.
They were five hundred yards downriver from the main house. Through the trees, he could see the amber floodlights illuminating the estate’s perimeter walls. Two black SUVs were parked near the rear garage—Nico’s personal escape team.
Damian pulled out his phone. Out in the open air, the signal bars immediately lit up.
He hit speed-dial for Owen Hale.
“Damian!” Owen’s voice answered on the first ring, tight with panic. “I’m at the east gate. Nico’s guards won't let me through. They’re claiming there’s an active structural hazard inside the main house!”
“Listen to me, Owen,” Damian said, his voice razor-sharp. “Get off the main road. Drive down to the old boat launch near the river bluff. I have Marisol’s daughter with me. She needs a medical check, immediately.”
“Where are you? What the hell is going on?”
“Nico turned,” Damian said simply. “He’s got Enzo with him. I’m going back in.”
“Damian, wait! You can't go back in there alone if they’ve taken the security grid!”
“It’s my house,” Damian said, and hung up.
He turned to Camila, pulling his heavy wool sweater over his head and wrapping her in it until she looked like a small, bundled package. “You’re going to sit behind these bushes and count to one hundred, Camila. When you see a black sedan with a red cross on the window, you run to it. That’s Dr. Owen. He’s safe.”
She looked at him, her dark eyes reflecting the distant floodlights. “Will you find my mama?”
“I won't come back without her,” Damian promised.
He turned and melted into the treeline, moving back toward his home like a ghost returning to haunt the living.
He bypassed the main gates entirely, using the drainage pipe route to re-enter the property’s outer perimeter. He scaled the stone wall behind the generator shed, pulling himself up onto the roof of the six-car garage.
Through the high transom windows of the private security suite above the garage, he saw them.
Nico was standing at the central monitor bank, furiously wiping hard drives and slapping encrypted flash drives into a leather briefcase. Beside him stood a taller, broader man dressed in a dark tactical jacket, a heavy scar running from his temple down to his jaw line.
Enzo.
Damian stood on the roof in the cold rain, watching the brother he had mourned for twelve years laugh as he clapped Nico on the shoulder. On a steel table in the corner of the room, bound to a chair with zip-ties, her lip swollen and bleeding, was Marisol.
May you like
A fresh fire ignited in Damian’s chest—cold, white-hot, and absolute.
He pulled his weapon, checked the magazine, chambered a round, and kicked the heavy glass transom window inward with a deafening crash.
