Chapter 9 - The Crossfire of Sins
Vincent did not leave the perimeter.
He sent his security detail away, ordering the Escalades to wait at a marina two miles down the coast. For three hours, he stood under the weeping moss of a massive live oak across the narrow county road, his eyes fixed on the illuminated second-story window of the estate—the window where a small nightlight cast a soft blue glow over his son’s bedroom.
The rain began to fall again—not the violent, freezing downpour of Chicago, but a warm, heavy Southern deluge that soaked through his wool suit, plastering his dark hair to his forehead. He didn't move. He stood like a gargoyle carved from grief, accepting the misery as his rightful penance.
Suddenly, the hair on the back of Vincent’s neck stood up.
A lifetime of surviving gang wars and assassination attempts had honed his instincts to an animalistic edge. Through the steady drumming of the rain on the palmetto fronds, he heard the faint, muffled hum of high-displacement marine engines cutting through the tidal marsh behind the estate.
Vincent’s eyes narrowed. Skidaway Island was private property. Commercial and recreational boat traffic was strictly prohibited in the tidal creeks bordering the Sterling estate after dusk.
He slipped into the shadows of the tree line, moving silently through the wet underbrush toward the western perimeter where the marsh met the manicured lawn.
Through the curtain of rain, Vincent spotted two rigid-hull inflatable boats—blacked out, running without navigation lights—gliding silently into the shallow tidal creek. Six men in dark tactical gear, carrying suppressed submachine guns, vaulted over the gunwales and sank into the muddy reeds.
These were not Sterling security guards.
Vincent focused on the insignia patch visible on the lead operative’s tactical vest under the lightning flash: a silver scorpion coiled around a broken dagger.
*The Valenti Cartel.*
A jolt of pure adrenaline surged through Vincent’s veins, incinerating his despair in an instant.
Enzo Valenti—the ruthless Miami-based drug lord whose northern distribution pipeline Vincent had systematically dismantled eighteen months ago. Valenti had lost forty million dollars in seized narcotics and had sworn a blood vendetta against the Moretti family.
*They didn't track Claire,* Vincent realized with sickening horror. *They tracked me.*
Valenti’s intelligence network had monitored Vincent’s private jet leaving Chicago. They had tracked his convoy to Savannah, assumed this isolated coastal estate was a secret hideout or an unfortified target, and had deployed a hit squad to slaughter everyone inside to claim their revenge.
Vincent had brought the devil straight to his family’s front door.
"No," Vincent snarled under his breath. "Not tonight."
Without hesitation, without a weapon, Vincent sprinted through the darkness, cutting diagonally across the marsh to intercept the flanking team.
The rear operative never heard him coming through the rain. Vincent leaped from the brush, wrapping his forearm around the man’s throat in a crushing chokehold while his other hand drove upward, twisting the operative’s neck with a sharp, sickening *snap*.
Before the body hit the mud, Vincent stripped the suppressed MPX submachine gun and two spare magazines from the dead man’s rig.
Ahead on the lawn, the first perimeter sensor tripped. A high-pitched alarm began to wail across the Sterling estate, and floodlights instantly bathed the manicured grounds in blinding white light.
The Valenti hit squad abandoned stealth.
"Open fire! Clear the house!" the lead gunman barked in Spanish, raising his weapon toward the veranda French doors.
Before the hit squad could fire a single round into the glass, Vincent stepped out from the marshline, raising his captured weapon. His gray eyes burned with the lethal, terrifying precision that had made him the most feared predator in the Midwest.
*Rat-tat-tat-tat!*
Vincent fired two controlled bursts. The two lead gunmen dropped instantly, rounds punching clean through their visors.
"Ambush! Flank left!" the remaining three mercenaries screamed, scrambling for cover behind the stone fountain in the center of the courtyard.
High-caliber return fire chewed into the dirt around Vincent’s feet. A bullet grazed his left shoulder, tearing through his suit and opening a hot line of blood, but Vincent didn't even blink. He advanced through the gunfire like an unholy specter, returning fire with lethal rhythm.
Suddenly, the heavy front doors of the mansion blew open.
Marcus Vance appeared on the veranda, wielding an automatic tactical shotgun. Beside him, dressed in dark trousers with a heavy-caliber Kimber 1911 gripped in both hands, was Claire.
She didn't scream. She didn't cower.
Claire raised the heavy pistol, acquired a target behind the fountain who was trying to flank Vincent, and squeezed the trigger twice with textbook precision. The heavy .45-caliber slugs shattered the gunman’s shoulder and chest, dropping him onto the bloody marble rim of the fountain.
Vincent took out the final operative with a single round through the neck.
Silence crashed back over the estate, broken only by the wailing perimeter siren and the torrential downpour of rain.
Vincent stood in the center of the lawn, chest heaving, his suit soaked in rainwater and blood—both his own and his enemies'. He dropped the empty submachine gun into the grass, his hands shaking slightly as the adrenaline receded.
On the veranda, Claire slowly lowered her smoking weapon.
May you like
Her hazel eyes locked onto Vincent across the field of dead men. She looked at his bleeding shoulder, looked at the bodies he had dropped to protect her home, and realized with absolute clarity who had led this nightmare to her doorstep.
***
