Chapter 5 - The Night of the Storm
In his hand, Adrian held a encrypted recording device, its small red light blinking steadily.
Behind him stood Mr. Vance and four heavy-set men in black tactical coats, their hands resting on concealed firearms.
Selene’s wine glass slipped from her fingers, shattering on the hardwood floor—a dark red stain spreading across the rug just like the champagne six weeks earlier.
“Adrian...” Selene gasped, every drop of color draining from her striking face. “I... I didn't mean—she provoked me! She’s lying!”
“I heard every word,” Adrian said. His voice was terrifyingly calm, a quiet before a hurricane. “Six years. Six years I sat in this house believing my daughter was broken. Six years I let you comfort me while your family paid Thorne to poison my blood.”
“Adrian, please!” Selene cried, taking a step back as the tactical men stepped into the room. “Our families have an alliance! You can't break the treaty over a servant’s tricks!”
“The treaty died the moment you touched my daughter,” Adrian said softly. He gestured to his men. “Take her to the cellar. Secure her until my council arrives. No one leaves Blackwater House tonight.”
“You bastard!” Selene screamed as the men grabbed her arms, dragging her thrashing and cursing down the long, dark corridor. “My brothers will burn this estate to the ground! You hear me?! They know Thorne’s men are coming tonight!”
The heavy double doors downstairs slammed shut, cutting off her screams.
Outside, a violent autumn storm erupted. Thunder rattled the stained-glass windows of the third floor, and rain lashed against the stone walls like thrown gravel.
Adrian turned to Clara. The dark rage in his eyes faded, replaced by an expression of profound, aching gratitude.
“You heard her,” Adrian said quietly. “Her family has hired mercenaries to breach the perimeter tonight. Thorne’s men are coming to destroy the evidence.”
“We have to protect Maya,” Clara said, stepping toward the bed where Maya sat huddled, wide-eyed and terrified.
“Vance is locking down the steel blast doors on the lower levels,” Adrian said, walking over and kneeling beside Maya’s bed. He took his daughter’s small hand in his massive palm. “Maya... look at me, moya zvezda.”
“Father,” Maya sobbed. “Are bad people coming?”
“No bad person will ever touch you again,” Adrian promised, pressing his lips to her knuckles. “I am going downstairs to end this war once and for all.”
He stood up and looked at Clara. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small, silver-handled pistol, placing it gently in Clara’s hands.
“Stay in this room,” Adrian ordered her, his gaze holding hers with an intense, fierce flame. “Lock the oak doors from the inside. If anyone breaches that hallway who is not me... shoot them.”
Clara looked at the cold steel in her hands, then up into his dark eyes.
“Come back to us,” Clara whispered.
Adrian reached out, his long fingers cupping the back of her neck, pulling her forward until his forehead rested against hers.
“I will always come back to you,” he murmured.
Then he turned and walked out into the dark, storm-swept corridor, closing the heavy doors behind him.
Twenty minutes later, the lights in the mansion died.
The third floor was plunged into pitch blackness, illuminated only by the brilliant flashes of lightning outside the window. Downstairs, the muffled roar of automatic gunfire and breaking glass echoed through the floorboards.
The March family’s mercenaries had breached the courtyard.
Inside the suite, Clara locked the heavy oak bolts. She pulled a heavy dresser across the door, creating a makeshift barricade. She turned back to Maya, who was shivering under her blankets in the dark.
“Clara!” Maya gasped as a sudden, deafening explosion rocked the floor beneath them. “I’m scared!”
“I’m right here,” Clara said, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding the silver pistol in her right hand while wrapping her left arm around the child. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Suddenly, a loud CRACK echoed from the balcony outside the suite’s French doors!
Glass shattered in a shower of sharp crystals! A tall, heavy figure stepped through the swirling rain and wind, holding a crowbar and a silenced weapon.
Dr. Marcus Thorne.
His clothes were mud-stained, his face twisted into a maniacal, desperate sneer in the flash of lightning.
“Found you, little nurse!” Thorne shouted over the roar of the storm, stepping over the broken glass into the room. “Did you really think Adrian Vale could save you? My men have him pinned in the foyer!”
Clara stood up instantly, stepping in front of Maya, raising the silver pistol with both hands.
“Stay back!” Clara yelled, her hands trembling, but her posture unyielding. “I will shoot you!”
Thorne laughed—a bitter, ugly sound. “You’ve never fired a gun in your life, girl! Give me the child! If I take her as a hostage, Adrian will give me safe passage out of the country!”
He lunged forward, grabbing Clara’s wrist, twisting the gun out of her hand! The weapon clattered across the floorboards, rolling under the heavy mahogany table out of reach!
Thorne struck Clara across the face with his backhand. Clara fell hard against the edge of the nightstand, her head slamming against the wood, blood spurting from a cut on her temple.
“Clara!” Maya screamed from the bed.
Thorne ignored Clara, turning toward the bed, reaching out his thick, cruel hands to grab Maya’s shoulders. “Come here, you little brat—”
“LEAVE HER ALONE!”
A voice screamed through the storm—not a child’s whimper, but a roar of absolute, fierce defiance.
Clara, dazed on the floor, wiped the blood from her eye and looked up.
Maya had thrown off her heavy blankets.
Driven by pure, primal terror for the woman who had spent three weeks holding her through the dark, Maya slid her legs over the edge of the mattress.
Her small feet touched the cold, bare hardwood floor.
Thorne froze, staring at the girl in shock.
Maya’s knees buckled. Her body shook violently. The six years of trapped nerves burned like liquid fire through her legs.
She screamed in pain—but she did not fall.
She locked her small joints. She forced her weak muscles to contract.
And then, Maya Vale took a step forward.
Then another.
She lurched across the two-foot gap, grabbing a heavy brass candlestick from the side table, and swung it with all her tiny, desperate might straight into Marcus Thorne’s knee!
CRACK!
Thorne shrieked in pain, his kneecap shattering, dropping him to his bad leg!
Clara didn't waste the second Maya had bought them.
She lunged from the floor, grabbed the heavy glass water carafe from the table, and shattered it directly over Thorne’s head!
The doctor collapsed onto the floor, unconscious, bleeding into the broken glass.
Clara gasped for breath, turning around—and froze.
Maya was standing in the middle of the room.
May you like
She was trembling, her small feet planted on the hardwood, her tears overflowing, looking down at her own legs in utter, disbelieving wonder.
“Clara...” Maya whispered, taking one more shaky, triumphant step forward into Clara’s open arms. “I’m standing.”
