Chapter 4 - THE SIEGE OF THE CROSS ESTATE
"Put the gun down, Nathaniel," Dante said softly, leaning on a silver-headed cane. "Or my men in the east wing will put three bullets through the mother before the child even realizes what is happening."
Nathaniel’s heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. For years, he had been invulnerable because he cared about nothing. He had walked into gunfights without a jacket because he didn't care if he lived or died. But now, the image of little Lily — the child who had placed flower clips on Titan’s ears and smiled at him without fear — flashed through his mind.
Titan stood beside Nathaniel, his lips pulled back over black gums, a deep rumble vibrating in his chest.
"You haven't changed, Dante," Nathaniel said coldly, slowly lowering his firearm to the floor. "Still hiding behind women and children. Still sending other men to do your dirty work."
"It works, doesn't it?" Dante chuckled, waving his hand. Two of his mercenaries stepped forward, shoving Nathaniel against the damp wooden wall and pinning his arms behind his back, while another man kicked the brass key and Eleanor’s chest into Dante’s reach.
"Twenty-one years I’ve waited for this," Dante murmured, running his gloved fingers over the iron chest. "Your mother was a fool, Nathaniel. She thought she could expose the alliance between the Crosses and the Salvatores. With this ledger, I can blackmail every senator, judge, and police chief from here to Washington. And with you dead, the Cross syndicate will crumble overnight."
Dante looked down at Titan, who was crouched low, waiting for the split second to strike. "Kill the dog," Dante ordered casually to one of his men. "I hate these miserable beasts."
The mercenary raised his suppressed rifle, aiming directly between Titan's eyes.
"NO!" Nathaniel roared, shoving his weight backward into the man holding him.
At that exact second, the lights across the entire estate plunged into pitch blackness.
A siren blared across the perimeter. Above the roar of the storm, the voice of Marcus Vance echoed over the estate's PA system: "Security protocol Alpha activated. Perimeter blacked out. Internal defenses engaged."
Marcus hadn't been idle. The moment the microscopic transmitter inside Lily’s teddy bear had been picked up by the estate’s bug-sweeping frequencies ten minutes prior, Marcus had tracked the signal, neutralized Dante's snipers outside Clara’s window, and cut the main power grid to give Nathaniel the dark.
In total darkness, Titan became what he was born to be: a monster of the shadows.
A scream tore through the boathouse as Titan launched his one-hundred-and-sixty-pound frame through the air. Bones snapped under crushing jaws, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting the stone floor. Muzzle flashes illuminated the space in blinding strobes, but Titan moved like a phantom, tearing through the mercenaries with terrifying speed.
Nathaniel didn't waste a microsecond. In the dark, he grabbed the throat of the man pinning him, drove his elbow into the soldier’s solar plexus, retrieved his pistol from the floor, and fired two precise shots into the dark.
"Dante!" Nathaniel shouted above the gunfire and the dog’s ferocity.
Dante, panicked and blind in the pitch-black boathouse, grabbed the heavy iron chest and stumbled backward toward the dock where a high-speed speedboat was idling in the black water. "Shoot them! Shoot everything!" Dante screamed to his surviving men.
Nathaniel charged through the rain, but a burst of automatic fire kicked up wet gravel at his feet, forcing him to take cover behind a stone pillar. By the time he neutralized the last shooter, the roar of a boat engine tore through the storm.
Dante was speeding away into the dark, churning waters of Lake Michigan, taking Eleanor’s ledger with him.
Nathaniel ran to the dock, watching the red tail lights of the boat disappear into the blinding rain. Beside him, Titan trotted up, his flank bleeding from a grazing bullet wound, but his jaw held tight. He dropped something at Nathaniel’s feet.
It was Dante’s satellite phone, ripped from his coat during the melee.
Nathaniel picked up the phone, his face dripping with rain and blood. "Marcus!" he barked into his earpiece.
"I'm here, boss," Marcus's voice crackled through the comms. "The girl and her mother are secure. We cleared the two shooters outside their door before they could react. Lily is fine... though she’s asking why the lights went out."
Nathaniel let out a long, ragged breath. "Get the medical team to the main house to patch up Titan. Then prepare the helicopter."
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"Where are we going, sir?"
Nathaniel stared out into the dark, roaring lake, his eyes burning with an ancient, unstoppable wrath. "Dante Salvatore took my mother's legacy. He thinks he’s escaping to his island stronghold. We’re going to end this tonight."
