Chapter 4 - The Quiet Current Awakens
Before Silas could finish his sentence, the glass of the living room window shattered inward with the deafening crack of a high-powered rifle bullet.
"Down!" I roared.
My body moved before my brain could process the violence. I lunged across the small room, tackling Silas to the linoleum just as a second round punched through the drywall where his head had been resting. Plaster dust exploded into the air, white and choking.
Mateo screamed from the bedroom. "Ate!"
"Stay under the bed, Mateo! Cover your ears!" I shouted in Tagalog.
Silas grunted, rolling against the base of the sofa. Outside in the hallway, the sound of muffled gunfire erupted—short, rhythmic bursts from suppressed submachine guns. Silas's two bodyguards were already engaging the hit squad.
"Lane’s cleaners," Silas hissed, coughing through the plaster dust. "They didn't wait for nightfall. They want Alexander to find your corpse before noon to send a message."
A heavy thud rattled our front door. The wood splintered near the lock.
"The fire escape," Silas said, reaching into his coat for a snub-nosed revolver. "Take your family and run. I will hold—"
"No," I cut in.
A strange, unnatural calm descended over me. The terror that had gripped my throat for six years—the fear of rent, the fear of eviction, the fear of the shadows that had swallowed my father—evaporated like mist in the morning sun.
*Speed comes after control, mija.* My father's voice echoed in my ears, deep and resonant. *When the storm strikes, do not meet the wind with stone. The stone chips. The stone breaks. Become the water. The water cannot be cut.*
I stood up, stepping over the broken glass with bare feet.
The front door kicked open with a thunderous bang. A man in tactical black gear, wearing a ballistic balaclava and holding a suppressed MPX, crossed the threshold. His weapon swept toward Silas.
He never finished the arc.
I stepped forward, closing the four-foot gap before he could adjust his sightline. My left hand struck the outer edge of his barrel, redirecting the muzzle toward the ceiling just as he pulled the trigger. Three rounds chewed into the plaster above us.
With my right palm, I struck upward into his armpit, collapsing the nerve cluster. The submachine gun slipped from his numb fingers. Before it hit the floor, my hip rotated, my foot sweeping his lead leg from behind while my forearm drove into his collarbone.
The 200-pound operative hit the floor with a bone-jarring crash, his breath expelled in a sharp gasp. I twisted his wrist in an inverted lock, dislocating the elbow with a single, controlled snap, and stripped the sidearm from his tactical vest.
A second operative entered the doorway, raising a combat shotgun.
I didn't shoot. The gun in my hand was unfamiliar, the trigger weight unknown. Instead, I grabbed the collar of the first downed operative, using his bulk as a rotating shield, and drove him into the second man's chest. The shotgun blasted harmlessly into the wooden doorframe.
Spinning with the momentum, I ducked under the second man's flailing elbow, caught his wrist, and channeled his forward inertia directly into the brick wall of the hallway. His skull cracked against the masonry, and his knees folded instantly.
Silence fell over the corridor, punctuated only by the distant wail of sirens down on Broadway.
I stood in the wreckage of my childhood home, breathing steadily through my nose. My hands weren't shaking anymore. The blood was singing through my veins with a terrifying, beautiful clarity.
Silas picked himself up from the floor, his bone crane cane slightly scuffed, his eyes staring at the two unconscious, elite mercenaries lying broken at my feet.
"God help anyone who tries to harm you," the old man whispered in awe.
I lowered the captured pistol, turning toward the bedroom where my mother was now sobbing and clinging to Mateo.
May you like
"Call Alexander," I said, my voice completely devoid of fear. "Tell him the debt is acknowledged. And tell him to bring a car."
***
