Chapter 4 - SHADOWS ON CICERO AVENUE
The bullet passed precisely where my head had been half a second earlier, embedding itself deep into the plaster wall above the faux-wood television stand.
"Get down!" I screamed, lunging forward and tackling my mother out of her recliner, dragging her down onto the worn carpet just as a second round punched through the glass, showering us with diamond shards.
Mom was gasping, clutching her chest, her weak heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. "Avery—"
"Stay flat! Don't move!"
I belly-crawled across the floor to the baseboard, reaching up to slap the light switch. The apartment plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the rhythmic orange flicker of the streetlights outside and the rain streaking through the broken pane.
Down on the street, two car doors slammed.
Heavy, hurried boots began pounding up the wooden back staircase that led to our kitchen door. They weren't using the front entrance; they knew the layout of the building. Whoever had sent them wasn't trying to send a warning. This was an execution squad.
Vanessa? No. Vanessa Whitmore was a spoiled socialite with money, but she couldn't mobilize a hit team with sniper overwatch in less than two hours.
This went deeper.
I grabbed the heavy cast-iron skillet from the stovetop with my right hand and reached into the utility drawer for the eight-inch carbon-steel chef's knife Dad had given me when I moved into my first place.
The back door’s flimsy brass deadbolt rattled. Then, a sharp crack as a crowbar splintered the wood frame.
The door flew inward.
A silhouette stepped through the threshold, holding a suppressed automatic pistol fitted with a tactical flashlight. The beam sliced through the darkness, sweeping across the empty kitchen counters.
I didn't wait for the light to find me.
I exploded from behind the refrigerator. I swung the cast-iron skillet with the full rotational force of my hips, catching the man flush against the side of his tactical helmet. The metallic clang rang out like a church bell. The sheer kinetic shock whipped his head sideways, throwing off his balance, and before he could raise the barrel, I drove my left shoulder into his sternum, driving him back into the narrow doorframe.
The second man behind him tried to push past his reeling comrade.
I hooked my foot behind the first shooter’s calf, wrenching him backward to use him as a human shield. The second shooter hesitated—just for a fraction of a second—afraid of shooting his own man.
That fraction of a second was all I needed.
I drove the pommel of the chef's knife directly into the bridge of the second man's nose. Cartilage crunched under the blow. He howled, staggering back onto the narrow exterior landing, and I followed up with a brutal front push-kick straight to his chest, sending him tumbling backward down the wet wooden stairs into the dark alley below.
The first man was recovering, swinging a wild backhand toward my jaw. I ducked beneath it, grabbed the collar of his tactical vest with both hands, and delivered a vicious knee strike directly to his groin, followed by an elbow to the base of his skull.
He dropped like an empty sack of grain.
Breathing heavily, rain misting onto my face through the open doorway, I knelt and stripped the suppressed pistol from his limp fingers. I checked the chamber: loaded. 9mm hollow points.
I turned back to the dark living room. "Mom! We have to move right now!"
"Avery..." Her voice was barely a whisper.
I ran to her side. She hadn't been hit by glass, but the sheer shock of the attack had pushed her fragile body over the edge. Her lips were turning blue, her breathing ragged, shallow gasps. Her kidneys were failing, and the stress was sending her into septic shock.
"Hold on, Mom. Please hold on," I pleaded, tears burning my eyes as I gathered her lightweight body into my arms.
I couldn't take the front stairs. The sniper on the opposite roof would pick us off the second we cleared the lobby doors.
Suddenly, tires screeched in the alleyway below. Bright headlights flooded the kitchen landing.
I raised the gun, bracing myself to fight my way out with my dying mother in my arms.
A man climbed the rain-soaked stairs taking them three at a time. He wasn't wearing tactical gear. He wore a sodden black wool overcoat, his gun already drawn and pointed downward.
Dominic Moretti.
He appeared in the doorway, his chest heaving, his sharp eyes taking in the unconscious gunman at my feet, the blood on my hands, and the weapon pointed directly at his chest.
"Put it down, Avery," Dominic commanded, though his voice lacked its usual icy detachment. "The sniper on the water tower is dead. My men took him out thirty seconds ago. If you don't get your mother to a hospital within twenty minutes, she will die in this room."
"Did you send them?!" I snarled, my finger tightening against the trigger. "Did you send them to finish what happened to my father?!"
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Dominic stepped directly toward the barrel of my gun, stopping when the cold steel touched the fabric of his coat right over his heart.
"If I wanted you dead, Avery, you never would have made it past my front gates," he said softly. "The men who killed your father eight years ago just found out Thomas Carter had a daughter who fights like a ghost. And right now, I'm the only thing standing between you and the cemetery."
