Chapter 9 - The Siege of Bennett Harbor
Two weeks passed.
The fall of Vanessa Russo and Salvatore Moretti had triggered a shockwave through the Eastern seaboard. With federal agents seizing Salvatore’s assets in New York and Montreal, the remaining fragments of his syndicate were desperate.
And desperate men do not negotiate; they retaliate.
Claire had spent fourteen consecutive hours in the Bennett Atlantic command center, coordinating with port authorities to lock down every container yard from Maine to Rhode Island. Gabriel had sent fifty of his most trusted private guards to encircle her estate and corporate offices, but Claire had refused to see him. Every bouquet of white roses he sent was thrown into the incinerator. Every handwritten letter was returned unopened.
At midnight, Claire stepped onto the private balcony of her Marblehead home. The ocean below was black, the waves crashing against the jagged cliffs with deafening fury.
Suddenly, the power cut out.
The entire estate plunged into absolute darkness.
Downstairs, the muffled pop of suppressed gunfire echoed through the foyer.
Claire’s blood ran cold. She reached for the panic button concealed beneath the balcony railing, but the line was dead.
The heavy glass doors behind her shattered inward.
Three men in tactical masks lunged onto the balcony, heavy zip-ties and duct tape in their hands.
"Get the Bennett girl!" one hissed in a thick European accent. "Salvatore wants her on the tanker before dawn!"
Claire didn't scream. She grabbed a heavy bronze patio lantern and swung it with all her strength into the face of the first assailant. The glass shattered, the metal fracturing his nose with a sickening crunch. The second man tackled her to the stone floor, his knee pressing into her ribs as he pinned her wrists above her head.
"Fucking bitch—" the man snarled, raising a fist.
The man’s head jerked violently backward as a gunshot roared through the salt air.
Blood sprayed across Claire’s face as the attacker collapsed limply across her legs.
Gabriel Moretti stood in the shattered doorway of the balcony.
He was pale, his left arm held rigid against his side, his suit jacket open over a tactical vest. In his right hand, a heavy Colt .45 smoked in the freezing wind. His eyes were wild, bloodshot, radiating the primal fury of an archangel defending his altar.
The third assailant lunged at him with a combat knife. Gabriel didn't even step back. He stepped directly *into* the blade, letting the steel slice through his forearm as he drove his gun under the man’s chin and pulled the trigger.
The deafening report echoed out over the ocean.
The last attacker fell over the balcony railing, tumbling eighty feet down into the churning black waves below.
Gabriel stood among the shattered glass and the dead, his chest heaving, blood dripping from his arm onto the white stone patio. He dropped the gun. It clattered against the tiles.
He fell to his knees in front of Claire, his good arm wrapping around her waist, burying his face against her neck.
"You're safe," he gasped, his entire body trembling violently with an exhaustion that went deeper than bone. "You're safe, Claire. I took care of them. They won't ever touch you again."
Claire sat frozen on the cold stone, Gabriel’s blood soaking into her sweater, his ragged breath burning against her skin. She raised her trembling hands, hovering them over his broad shoulders, before slowly, hesitantly letting them rest against his back.
"You're bleeding again, Gabriel," she whispered.
May you like
"Let me bleed," he choked out, clutching her as if the entire world would end if he loosened his grip by a millimeter. "Just don't leave me in the dark."
***
