Chapter 8 - The Siege of Mercer Hall
Daniel Cross spun around, raising his silver pistol. The two men behind him halted, their weapons instantly leveling at her chest.
“Well, well,” Daniel sneered, wiping rain from his eyes with his sleeve. “The domestic help. Where is the Mercer heir, Elena? Give him to me, and I might just let you walk out the front gate with your little boy.”
Elena walked forward slowly, keeping her hands visible, holding the flat slab of slate behind the fold of her heavy wool apron.
“Cole isn't dead,” Elena said, her voice cutting through the hiss of the rain. “You’re running because you know he’s still breathing. And you know what he does to men who touch what belongs to him.”
Daniel’s face darkened, the refined veneer stripping away to reveal the feral, terrified rat beneath. “Cole Mercer is finished! The Salieris have sixty men surrounding the block! By midnight, this entire family is history!”
“You’re a coward, Daniel,” Elena said, taking another measured step, drawing them further away from the rose bushes where the children hid. “You used a six-year-old child to cover your theft. You broke Claire’s music box because you were shaking with fear that Cole would find out what a pathetic, thieving parasite you are.”
Daniel’s composure snapped.
“Shut your mouth!” he roared, closing the distance between them with long, violent strides. He reached out with his left hand, grabbing Elena by the collar of her shirt, shoving the cold muzzle of his silver pistol hard beneath her jaw. “Where is the boy? Tell me, or I’ll blow your brains across this lawn!”
Elena looked Daniel dead in his wild, bloodshot eyes.
“Noah was right,” she whispered coldly. “You really are a bad secret agent.”
With all the strength in her body, Elena brought her right hand up from behind her apron, driving the jagged point of the heavy slate rock directly into the side of Daniel’s neck.
Daniel shrieked—a high, wet, choked sound—as the stone tore through flesh. His pistol discharged wild into the night sky with a deafening *CRACK*. He stumbled backward, clutching his throat, dark blood spurting between his fingers.
“Shoot her!” Daniel gurgled, falling to his knees in the mud. “Shoot the b—”
The two men raised their guns.
Elena didn't close her eyes. She braced herself to die.
They never fired.
From the darkness of the tree line, a single, thunderous gunshot roared through the storm—not the suppressed hiss of a tactical rifle, but the deep, deafening bellow of a high-caliber hunting rifle.
The first man’s chest caved inward, his body lifted off his feet and thrown three yards back into the rose bushes.
Before the second man could turn, Cole Mercer emerged from the black shadows of the weeping willows like a wrathful god.
He was drenched in rain and blood—none of it his own. His suit jacket was gone; his white shirt was torn to ribbons, plastered to the heavy muscle of his torso. In his hands, he carried a heavy Benelli combat shotgun.
He fired once.
The second man folded in half and collapsed into the mud, lifeless before he hit the ground.
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Cole didn't stop. He racked the bolt, ejecting a steaming red shell casing onto the grass, and walked deliberately toward Daniel Cross, who was crawling backward through the mud, leaving a thick trail of crimson across the lawn.
***
