Chapter 6 - Five Bullets
The steel door handle exploded inward in a cloud of white smoke, fire, and shredded metal.
The heavy, armored rear door blew outward off its hinges, swinging wildly in the rain and wind.
The freezing rain swept into the interior of the vehicle, mixing with the smell of burnt gunpowder, cordite, and copper.
In the doorway stood a man.
He was dressed in dark tactical gear, a black balaclava covering his face, his eyes wild and bloodshot. In his hands, he held a heavy, large-caliber automatic shotgun, aimed directly into the rear seat where Isabella DeLuca sat cowering beneath the silk pillows.
The attacker didn't hesitate. He didn't speak.
His finger tightened on the trigger, aiming square at Isabella’s chest.
Marco was screaming from the front seat, twisting his body through the narrow gap between the seats, his gun raising, but he was half a second too late.
Lena Carter saw it all in terrifying, slow-motion clarity.
She saw the black barrel of the gun. She saw the man’s bloody finger on the trigger. She saw Isabella’s terrified, helpless eyes staring up from the leather seat.
She thought of Danny. She thought of the numbers in her notebook. She thought of the old woman who had given her a quiet place to breathe for eleven months.
Lena didn't hesitate.
She threw herself across Isabella’s body.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Six shots cracked through the narrow space of the SUV.
The first bullet struck Lena in the upper right shoulder, the force spinning her body sideways. The second bullet ripped through her lower ribs on the left side. The third struck her collarbone, shattering the bone into fragments. The fourth slammed into her hip. The fifth tore through her upper back, inches from her spine.
The sixth bullet wildly chipped the leather upholstery above Isabella’s head as Lena’s body took the full impact of the salvo.
Blood—hot, dark, and abundant—erupted across the white silk pillows, the black leather seats, and Isabella’s pale, screaming face.
"LENA!" Isabella shrieked, her hands catching the falling, ruined body of her caregiver. "NO! NO! MARCO!"
Marco reached the rear compartment a second later.
His face was transformed into something demonic. He fired four rapid rounds into the attacker’s head, blowing the man backward off the SUV’s running board into the mud below.
Outside, Caruso’s surviving team finally gained the high ground, their heavy rifles cutting down the remaining ambushers on the overpass until the roar of gunfire abruptly died into a quiet, rain-drenched hiss.
Inside the SUV, the silence was deafening.
Lena collapsed across Isabella’s lap. Her grey caregiver’s tunic was entirely red, soaked through with thick, warm blood that was rapidly pooling on the floorboards.
Her eyes were wide, staring blankly up at the ruined ceiling of the car. Her breath came in short, wet, bubbling rasps that spilled red foam over her lips.
Marco dropped to his knees on the bloody floor of the SUV.
He looked at the sea of red covering his mother. He looked at Lena’s shattered shoulder, her torn throat, the brutal, gaping holes in her body.
He stopped as if the sight had hit him harder than any bullet he had ever taken in his life.
His hands—hands that had signed execution orders, hands that had controlled an empire of iron and fire—began to shake uncontrollably.
"No," Marco whispered.
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It was not an order. It was not a threat.
It was the sound of a man watching the universe shatter in front of his eyes.
