Chapter 9 - The Anchor in the Storm
I didn't think about Marcus Moretti. I didn't think about federal marshals, Canadian passports, or the ten armed men moving through the ground floor below us.
I dropped to my knees on the hardwood floor, ignoring the sharp wood splinters biting through my trousers, and slid six inches under the desk.
"Hey!" I shouted over the sound of gunfire echoing from the staircase. "I'm here!"
"Make it stop!" Finn sobbed, his small body shaking so violently he couldn't keep his head upright. "Harper, please make it stop!"
"I can't stop the sirens, buddy!" I yelled, reaching out and grabbing his tiny, icy-cold hands, pulling them away from his ears and locking my fingers tightly through his. "But I can stay until they do!"
"Anchor?" he gasped, his hazel eyes locking onto mine with the desperate, absolute faith of a drowning person catching a life preserver.
"Anchor," I confirmed, pulling his small frame out from beneath the desk and slamming him hard against my chest, wrapping both my arms around his head to block out the light and sound of the room. "Breathe with me! In for four! One... two... three... four!"
Behind us, Victor stepped into the doorway, his gun raised toward the corridor, his broad shoulders shielding us from the thick smoke pouring down the hall.
He looked down at us over his shoulder.
He saw his five-year-old son, who had spent fourteen months screaming through night terrors, resting his face against my collarbone, his breathing slowly, impossibly synchronizing with mine in the middle of an armed assault.
Something in Victor’s face shifted forever at that moment. The last piece of stone cracked and fell away, revealing the raw, unyielding love of a father who had finally realized what truly mattered.
"Leo!" Victor roared into his radio. "Clear the north corridor! We’re moving the boy now!"
"They’ve got two men at the top of the stairs, boss!" Leo screamed back over the static.
"Then tell them to start praying," Victor rasped.
He turned back to us, dropping to one knee beside the desk. He didn't order me to move. He didn't yell. He reached out with his heavy, blood-stained right hand and wrapped his long fingers completely around both of our joined hands—my right hand and Finn’s left.
"I've got you," Victor whispered, his grey eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that burned right through the smoke and fear. "I've got both of you."
He stood up, pulled Finn into his left arm, holding the boy tight against his tactical vest, and grabbed my wrist with his right hand, dragging me up off the floor.
"Keep holding his hand, Evelyn," Victor said as he led us toward the rear service stairs. "Don't let go."
"I won't," I promised.
We ran through the smoke-filled upper corridor, past the shattered glass of the display cases, past two fallen guards, down the narrow, winding stone staircase that led to the estate's subterranean utility tunnels.
Behind us, the sound of heavy boots echoed from the main foyer.
"Rossi!" a loud, arrogant voice shouted from the bottom of the grand staircase. It was Marcus Moretti. "Give us the girl and the flash drive, and we let you keep the kid!"
Victor stopped on the third landing of the stone stairs.
He turned around slowly, handed Finn to me, and reached into his belt, pulling out a small, black remote control with a clear red toggle switch.
"You always were an idiot, Marcus," Victor said softly into the quiet darkness of the stairwell.
He flipped the toggle switch.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
May you like
A series of small, precisely placed demolition charges detonated inside the support pillars of the main foyer above us.
Five thousand tons of solid Indiana limestone, marble flooring, and oak paneling collapsed downward with a deafening, thunderous roar, completely sealing the main house from the subterranean tunnels beneath, burying Marcus Moretti’s assault team under fifteen feet of solid rock.
