Chapter 5 - BLOOD IN THE GARDEN
"Down!" Josiah roared, his instincts taking over in a microsecond. He grabbed Willow by the waist and threw her onto the mattress, shielding both her and the startled, waking Mia with his massive frame.
Rounds tore through the exterior walls, sending chunks of plaster and shattered glass exploding into the opulent bedroom. The antique chandelier above crashed down onto the carpet in a shower of glittering dust.
"Daddy!" Mia screamed, covering her ears in sheer terror, the nightmare from her seventh birthday replaying before her eyes.
"I've got you, baby, I've got you," Josiah grunted. He reached beneath his jacket, drawing his gun, and kicked open the heavy false wall behind the walk-in closet—the entrance to the master panic room. "Willow! Get Mia inside the vault! Now!"
Willow didn't hesitate. Adrenaline surged through her veins, drowning out the primal terror. She scooped Mia into her arms, ignoring the sharp bites of broken glass digging into her bare feet, and scrambled toward the steel-reinforced doorway.
A masked gunman in tactical gear kicked through the splintered bedroom door, raising a submachine gun.
Josiah fired two deafening rounds without blinking. The intruder collapsed backward into the hall with a wet thud. But behind him, another figure tossed a stun grenade through the opening.
"Willow, shut the door!" Josiah bellowed, spinning around to engage the next wave of attackers.
Willow shoved Mia inside the reinforced steel room. "Stay there, Mia! Don't move!"
Instead of sealing herself inside to safety, Willow turned back. She saw Josiah grappling with two heavily armed operatives in the smoke-filled corridor. One of the men raised a combat knife, aiming straight for Josiah’s exposed kidney while Josiah wrestled the other man’s rifle.
Without thinking, Willow grabbed a heavy marble bookend from the broken nightstand. She lunged forward with a savage scream, slamming the solid stone into the attacker’s temple with all the desperate strength in her body.
The man collapsed, dazed and bleeding. Josiah used the distraction to snap the second man's neck with a brutal, sickening twist, before putting a bullet through the first attacker's chest.
Josiah turned, panting heavily, blood splattered across his white shirt. He stared at Willow, who stood shaking, the bloodied marble bookend still gripped in her white-knuckled fingers.
"I told you to lock yourself in," he rasped, his voice a mix of fury and awe.
"And let you die?" she breathed, her chest heaving. "Who's going to pay off my mom's bills if you're dead?"
A grim, fierce smile flashed across Josiah’s blood-flecked face. He grabbed her arm, pulling her into the panic room, and slammed the four-inch steel door shut, spinning the manual locking wheel until the heavy bolts engaged with a deep, echoing thud.
The vault plunged into relative silence, the muffled thumps of gunfire outside vibrating through the reinforced walls.
Mia threw herself into Willow’s legs, sobbing uncontrollably. "Willow! Willow, you're bleeding!"
Willow blinked, looking down. A piece of jagged shrapnel from the bedroom wall had sliced open her left forearm, dripping dark blood onto the polished steel floor. The adrenaline began to fade, replaced by a sharp, throbbing ache.
Josiah immediately dropped to his knees in front of her. His large, terrifying hands—hands that had just ended two lives without hesitation—were breathtakingly gentle as they took her injured arm.
"Dante and the perimeter team will clear the grounds in five minutes," Josiah said softly, ripping the sleeve of his own shirt to fashion a tight tourniquet around her wound. His dark eyes lifted to hers, filled with something dangerously close to reverence. "You saved my life."
"We're even," Willow whispered, her vision swimming slightly from shock. "You saved mine at Marcelo’s."
Josiah leaned closer, tying off the makeshift bandage. His breath was warm against her skin, his thumb caressing the soft curve of her wrist, feeling her frantic, racing pulse. "Nobody has ever stood between me and a blade, Willow. No one."
"Then you've been surrounding yourself with the wrong people," she managed a weak smile.
Mia wedged herself between them, wrapping one arm around her father's neck and the other around Willow's waist, burying her face into Willow’s side. "Don't leave us, Willow. Please. I promise I won't throw things anymore. Just don't go."
Willow looked down at the little girl, then up at the formidable mob boss whose eyes were begging her for the exact same thing. She reached out with her uninjured hand, gently stroking Mia’s tangled hair. "I'm not going anywhere, Mia. I'm right here."
Ten minutes later, the internal intercom clicked to life with Dante’s exhausted voice. "Boss. Perimeter is secure. Moretti’s strike team has been eliminated. But... you need to come out here. Salvatore left something in the main courtyard."
Josiah disengaged the vault lock, stepping out into the smoke-choked hallway with Willow and Mia behind him.
They walked down to the shattered marble foyer. Dante stood by the open front doors, illuminated by the flashing red and blue lights of private security vehicles. In the center of the driveway sat a burned-out tactical van. Spray-painted across its charred side in jagged crimson letters was a message that made the blood freeze in Willow’s veins:
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YOU CANNOT HIDE THE GIRL FOREVER, JOSIAH. DANTE SENDS HIS REGARDS.
Josiah spun around toward Dante, his gun clearing its holster in a heartbeat. But the space where his second-in-command had been standing was already empty.
