Chapter 5 - THE SIEGE AT RAVEN'S RIDGE
“Elena, get behind me,” Damian’s voice sliced through the darkness before I could even scream.
He moved with total spatial awareness, catching my arm in the dark and pulling me toward the steel-reinforced safe room behind the bookshelf in his study. But I dug my heels into the hardwood floor.
“I’m not hiding in a closet while they slaughter us!” I snapped, my adrenaline burning through the panic. “You’re one man against twenty! If Vincent gets through those doors, a steel lock won't save me!”
Damian stared at me in the shadows, his moonlight-etched face flashing with fierce approval. “Do you know how to shoot?”
“I grew up in South Boston with an uncle in the mob and a brother who stole cars,” I countered fiercely. “Give me a gun.”
Damian opened a hidden wall panel, revealing an entire tactical armory. He handed me a compact 9mm with a tritium night sight and took a suppressed combat shotgun and two extra sidearms for himself.
Outside, the first floodlights blinded us through the heavy reinforced windows. A megaphone crackled through the whistling wind.
“Damian!” Vincent’s familiar, gravelly voice boomed from the driveway. “Send the girl out! Hand over the clinic's digital encryption keys, and I’ll let you walk away from Boston alive! Salvatore Moretti has backed my play. The city is mine now!”
“He’s stalling to let his flankers breach the lower patio,” Damian whispered, checking his magazines with ruthless efficiency. “The glass on the lower level is ballistic grade, but three pounds of C4 on the hinges will tear it down in seconds.”
“The medical supplies,” I whispered suddenly, a cold, desperate plan forming in my mind. “Damian, you have an industrial oxygen tank for the high-altitude hyperbaric chamber in the basement, don't you?”
Damian's eyes flared with realization. “Two hundred liters of pressurized medical oxygen.”
“And the ventilation shafts connect directly to the basement patio doors,” I said, my voice steadying with grim focus. “If they blow the door with explosives while that oxygen line is venting into the vestibule—”
“The backdraft will incinerate the entire breach team,” Damian finished, a lethal, admiring grin curving his lips. “You really are something else, Elena.”
A deafening explosion rocked the lower floor before we could finish speaking. The floorboards buckled violently beneath us as plaster rained down from the ceiling. Alarms blared, flashing crimson through the corridors.
“Go to the sub-level!” Damian ordered, firing his shotgun down the spiral staircase into the smoke. Two enemy mercenaries charging up the steps were thrown backward by the heavy impact. “I’ll hold the stairwell!”
I bolted down the back service stairs, the cold concrete biting into my bare feet. Smoke was billowing through the lower corridor, smelling of sulfur and burnt wiring. I heard the crunch of tactical boots ahead of me—Vincent’s men were already clearing the ground-floor rooms.
I reached the hyperbaric room, located the brass valve on the massive emerald-green oxygen tanks, and jammed a steel wrench into the regulator. With all my strength, I pulled.
The seal ruptured. A deafening roar of pressurized pure oxygen blasted into the narrow hallway, creating a hyper-flammable cloud of invisible fuel.
Around the corner, two armed men in body armor stepped into the hallway, raising their assault rifles toward me.
“Drop the weapon, little niece!” one shouted.
I raised my 9mm, aimed past their heads directly at the sparking, severed electrical wire dangling from the ceiling, and pulled the trigger.
The spark met the oxygen cloud.
A concussive wave of golden fire erupted down the corridor with the roar of a jet engine. The shockwave threw the two men backward through the shattered glass patio doors, sweeping them out into the freezing ravine. I hit the floor behind the steel machinery, coughing through the heat as the sprinkler system finally engaged, dousing the flames in ice-cold water.
Heavy footsteps pounded down the stairs. Damian appeared through the steam and smoke, his weapon smoking, his shirt torn, but completely uninjured. He grabbed my arm, hauling me to my feet and pulling me into his chest for a breathless, desperate second.
“The main hall is clear,” he breathed against my wet hair. “Vincent is on the roof helipad. He has a chopper coming in to extract him.”
“Not without me, he doesn't,” I snarled, wiping ash from my face.
We sprinted up the external fire escape toward the rooftop. The freezing mountain wind battered us as we burst through the roof hatch.
Above us, the searchlights of an approaching Bell 429 helicopter illuminated the snow-covered landing pad. And standing near the edge, a leather satchel of stolen bearer bonds clutched in his hand, was my uncle Vincent.
He turned, raising a revolver, his face twisted in disbelief as he saw me standing beside Damian.
“Elena!” Vincent screamed over the deafening roar of the helicopter blades. “He’s a monster! He was going to use you and discard you!”
“You used my name to steal poison!” I screamed back, stepping forward into the blizzard. “You tried to murder Marcus! You tried to frame me for Damian’s death!”
“Because you were supposed to be collateral!” Vincent yelled desperately, his finger tightening on the trigger. “The Morettis promised me the entire pharmaceutical syndicate if Cross fell tonight!”
Vincent raised his gun to shoot me.
A sudden, sharp silhouette appeared from the shadows behind the helipad's mechanical shed. A young man, thin, pale, with identical green eyes to mine, lunged forward, tackling Vincent's arm into the air.
The gunshot went wild, shattering into the night sky.
“Julian?!” I cried out, my voice breaking.
It was my brother. Thin, scarred, but alive.
“Run, Elena!” Julian screamed, wrestling the heavier man on the icy concrete.
Vincent roared in fury, throwing Julian off him and leveling his gun at my brother's chest.
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Damian didn't hesitate. He stepped in front of me, raised his sidearm with terrifying, pinpoint precision, and fired three rounds into Vincent's chest.
The impact lifted my uncle off his feet. Vincent stumbled backward, his arms flailing, and plummeted off the edge of the helipad, disappearing into the black, jagged abyss of the thousand-foot ravine below.
