Chapter 5 - The Blood of the North
The iron lamp shattered against Victor’s skull with a sickening crunch.
Victor stumbled sideways, his gun firing wildly into the Persian rug.
Ethan moved like a shadow. Before the other three guards could adjust their aim, Ethan closed the distance, his knife flashing in the dim emergency light. He disarmed the first guard with a brutal twist of his wrist, drove a heavy elbow into the second man’s throat, and pulled the third into a chokehold, using him as a shield as Victor recovered and fired twice more.
The room erupted into chaos.
June threw herself behind the heavy leather sofa as bullets tore through the leather upholstery, sending cotton stuffing floating through the air like snow.
Ethan dropped the last guard, spun around, and fired three rounds from his custom Kimber .45 directly through Victor’s chest.
Victor crashed onto the mahogany desk, his eyes wide with shock, before sliding lifelessly onto the floor.
Ethan didn't pause to breathe. He strode over to Victor’s body, picked up the electronic detonator, and smashed it beneath his boot. He turned to June, his face covered in gunsmoke, his silver eyes burning with a terrifying, primal fury.
"Stay here!" Ethan barked, reloading his pistol with a practiced flick of his wrist.
"No!" June scrambled to her feet, her hands covered in dust and blood. "They took Avery and Emma! I’m coming with you!"
Ethan grabbed her collar, slamming her gently against the wall, his face inches from hers. "It’s a war zone down at the harbor, June! You could get killed!"
"They won't sleep for anyone else!" June screamed into his face, her hands gripping his lapels. "If they wake up in a cage, they will scream until their lungs bleed! You need me, Ethan!"
Ethan stared into her eyes, seeing the absolute defiance, the unyielding love for his daughters, and the roaring spirit of a woman who refused to be left behind.
"Get in the car," Ethan growled.
Ten minutes later, Ethan’s remaining loyal security detail—a convoy of three black armored SUVs—was tearing through the rain-drenched streets of Chicago toward Harbor Dock 42.
The rain fell in sheets, lightning illuminating the massive steel cranes and rusted shipping containers lined up along the black waters of Lake Michigan.
Inside the primary warehouse, Julian Rossi stood near the edge of the dock, watching as his men loaded two small, white-painted wooden crates onto a private yacht tied to the pier. From inside one of the crates, small, frantic fists were pounding against the wood, accompanied by high-pitched, terrified shrieks.
"Load them faster!" Julian shouted over the thunder. "Blackwood will be here in minutes!"
The heavy steel doors of the warehouse suddenly exploded inward as an armored SUV crashed straight through the corrugated metal at sixty miles an hour.
The vehicle spun out on the wet concrete, side-swiping three of Julian’s guards into the dark water below.
The SUV doors flew open.
Ethan Blackwood stepped out into the dark, firing with both hands, dropping two gunmen before they could even raise their rifles.
Behind him, June slid out of the passenger side, her gray wool dress soaked with rain, running directly toward the wooden crates on the edge of the pier.
"June! Stop!" Julian roared, pulling his own chrome revolver from his coat and aiming it at her chest. "You fool! You are a Rossi! You belong to the blood!"
June didn't stop. She didn't slow down.
She charged straight toward the barrel of his gun, her eyes burning with a fury that mirrored thirty generations of her mountain ancestors.
"I am not a Rossi!" June shouted over the storm. "And I am not yours!"
A gunshot rang out.
Julian’s eyes went wide as he stumbled backward, a bullet hole blossoming through his shoulder. Behind June, Ethan stood near the front bumper of the SUV, his smoking gun pointed directly at his rival.
June reached the crates, pulled a heavy steel crowbar from the floor of the dock, and jammed it beneath the lid of the first box. With a scream of pure effort, she leveraged her entire body weight against the iron.
The wood splintered open.
Four-year-old Avery tumbled out, sobbing hysterically, her eyes wide with terror as she saw the dark water and the flashing gunfire.
"June-bug!" Avery shrieked, throwing her tiny arms around June’s neck.
"I’m here! I’m here, sweetie!" June wept, prying open the second crate and pulling Emma into her arms, hugging both girls fiercely against her chest.
Julian Rossi lay bleeding on the wet planks of the pier, clutching his shattered shoulder as Ethan stood over him, the dark barrel of his pistol resting directly between Julian’s eyes.
"Give me one reason," Ethan whispered, his thumb pulling back the hammer of his gun, "why I shouldn't throw you into this lake tonight."
Julian coughed up blood, sneering through the pain. "Kill me... and my family will hunt your daughters until the end of time..."
June stood up on the pier, holding both little girls against her hips, their faces buried in her wet hair. She looked down at the bleeding old man with absolute coldness.
"If your family comes near them," June said, her voice dropping into the low, haunting cadence of the song that had tamed the mansion, "I will be the one who turns off their lights."
Julian stared up at her, seeing in her pale face not a helpless maid, but a true child of the dark—a woman who had survived poverty, violence, and terror, and emerged forged in steel.
Ethan didn't pull the trigger. He lowered his weapon and turned his back on Julian, stepping toward June and his daughters.
"Take him to the federal marshals," Ethan ordered his surviving guards. "Let him spend the rest of his miserable life in a maximum-security box."
Rain continued to pour over the Chicago harbor as Ethan wrapped his long black overcoat around June and the two girls, shielding all three of them from the icy wind.
Emma looked up through her tears, her small fingers touching June’s bruised cheekbone. "June-bug? Is it dark now?"
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June looked at Ethan. He was looking down at her with a quiet, profound tenderness that transformed his harsh, dangerous face into something human, beautiful, and deeply devoted.
"No, sweetie," June whispered, leaning her head against Ethan’s broad shoulder as his arm tightened around her waist. "The dark is gone. It's time to go home."
