Chapter 6 - THE CHESSBOARD
The silence in the office was absolute.
Elise didn't scream. She didn't jump. She simply stepped sideways, placing herself slightly between Jonah’s line of sight and Caleb’s right arm, her hands held open and visible at her sides.
“Jonah,” Caleb said, his voice dropping into a tone so cold it felt like ice sliding over steel. “Ten years. I pulled you out of a federal penitentiary, gave you a home, and paid you three million dollars a year.”
“And you kept me on a leash,” Jonah replied, his hand rock-solid on the weapon. “Ten years of wiping your mud off my boots, Caleb. Ten years of watching you give orders from behind a desk while I took the bullets.”
“The Morettis offered you Julian’s spot,” Caleb stated, not as a question, but as a fact.
“The Morettis offered me fifty percent of the waterfront,” Jonah corrected. “Julian was just the useful idiot we used to bypass the internal firewall. He thought he was going to run the family. In reality, he was going to take the fall for your murder, and then I was going to put a bullet in his head during his 'attempted escape' tonight.”
Jonah glanced at Elise, a flicker of genuine irritation in his eyes.
“And then this... scrub woman... had to look at the floor.”
“I’m a housekeeper, Mr. Price,” Elise said calmly, taking half a step forward. “And my job is removing trash that doesn't belong in the house.”
Jonah smiled wickedly. “You’re very brave for someone wearing an apron, Parker. But brave people die first.”
“Jonah,” Caleb interrupted smoothly, leaning back in his chair, folding his hands over his stomach. “Do you really think I built an international syndicate without putting a secondary kill-switch on my own security chief?”
Jonah’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second. “The house network is isolated. Marcus jammed all external cell signals ten minutes ago. You can’t call your external teams.”
“I don't need an external team,” Caleb said quietly.
He tapped his left foot twice against the footrest of his wheelchair.
A tiny, high-pitched click echoed from the underside of the mahogany desk.
Instantly, the heavy steel security shutters built into the window frames slammed down with a deafening CLANG, sealing the room in total pitch-black darkness.
BANG!
Jonah fired a shot into the dark where Caleb had been sitting, the bright muzzle flash illuminating the room for a millisecond.
But Caleb wasn't there.
The moment the shutters dropped, Caleb had engaged the high-torque electric motor of his backup chair, spinning ninety degrees to the left and driving full speed into the side of Jonah’s knees.
Jonah let out a sharp grunt of pain as two hundred pounds of metal and batteries smashed into his joints, sending him crashing heavily onto the mahogany desk.
“Elise! Low!” Caleb shouted into the dark.
Elise dropped flat onto her stomach on the oriental rug.
Overhead, Marcus opened fire with an automatic submachine gun, the muzzle flashes lighting up the darkness like strobe lights as bullets shredded the leather armchairs and shattered the glass bookshelves.
Elise crawled rapidly through the darkness toward the tea cart. Her fingers found the heavy silver tea kettle filled with boiling water.
She grabbed the handle, spun around on her knees, and hurled the entire pot of scalding water directly into Marcus’s face.
Marcus let out a blood-curdling scream as the boiling water hit his eyes and neck. He stumbled backward, dropping his weapon, clawing frantically at his burned face.
Caleb slammed his wheelchair into Marcus’s legs, knocking him down, while Elise reached up into the dark, grabbed the heavy iron desk lamp, and swung it with all her strength into Jonah’s temple as he tried to push himself off the desk.
CRACK.
Jonah collapsed onto the floor, unconscious.
Caleb flipped the manual override switch, and the emergency red backup lights flickered on, bathing the destroyed office in a dim, crimson glow.
Marcus lay groaning on the rug, blind and disarmed. Jonah was out cold, blood trickling from a cut on his forehead.
Elise sat on her heels, breathing heavily, her apron stained with tea and dust, holding the broken iron lamp in her right hand.
Caleb turned his wheelchair toward her.
His suit jacket was torn, his hair was messy, but his gray eyes were blazing with an intense, fierce light.
May you like
He looked at the two fallen traitors, then looked at the housekeeper sitting among the wreckage.
“Miss Parker,” Caleb said, his voice filled with deep, undeniable respect. “Remind me never to complain about your cleaning methods.”
