Chapter 8 - The Price of Green Silk
The first mercenary down the concrete stairwell was moving fast, wearing night-vision goggles and urban camo, clearing the corners with professional, sweeping muzzle discipline.
He didn't expect the target to be mobile. He certainly didn't expect the target to be waiting on the third landing behind a steel fire extinguisher bracket.
Evelyn didn't hesitate. She didn't shout a warning. She didn't ask him to surrender.
She squeezed the trigger.
The MPX barked in a controlled, three-round burst. The 9mm hollow points caught the mercenary in the upper chest and throat, punching through his light tactical vest. He tumbled down the remaining four concrete steps with a wet, heavy crash, his rifle clattering across the landing.
The recoil drove the weapon’s stock back into Evelyn’s right shoulder, but the shockwave reverberated through her ribcage and sent a sickening flare of white heat into her broken left forearm.
She cried out, a strangled, animal sound, stumbling against the concrete wall. Black spots swarmed her vision. She tasted bile at the back of her throat.
*Stay awake. Stay awake or you die.*
From the top of the stairwell, heavy boots pounded down the steps.
“Vassily is down! Target has an automatic! Second landing!” a voice barked in heavily accented English.
Two frag grenades bounced down the concrete steps, their metal spoons pinging off the walls.
Evelyn threw herself back into the bunker airlock, slamming her hip against the emergency door handle. She fell to the floor as the grenades detonated on the landing outside.
The concussive shockwave shook the eighty-foot-deep vault. Concrete dust and shrapnel raked the steel door with the sound of hail on a tin roof.
Her ears were ringing, a high, deafening whine that obliterated all sound. Her hospital gown was soaked in sweat and concrete powder. The tape holding her left arm had partially torn, and the titanium screws in her radius felt like they were twisting inside her bone marrow.
She crawled across the floor toward the armory cabinet, dragging her useless arm behind her.
Outside, heavy footsteps reached the airlock door.
A gloved hand reached through the warped steel seal, attempting to clear the jammed locking bar.
Suddenly, from the top of the stairwell, an entirely different sound erupted.
It was not the controlled, clinical tap of mercenary fire.
It was the unbridled, apocalyptic thunder of heavy-caliber machine-gun fire, accompanied by the unmistakable scream of a customized V8 twin-turbo engine tearing through the mansion’s ground-floor conservatory.
Adrian had arrived.
He had not taken the stairs. Marcus had rammed an armored Mercedes G-Wagon straight through the floor-to-ceiling glass of the main parlor, dropping the front bumper directly over the subterranean elevator shaft to secure the high ground.
Through the ringing in her ears, Evelyn heard the screams of the remaining mercenaries. It lasted less than forty-five seconds.
The gunfire was brief, brutal, and completely one-sided.
Silence descended over the bunker stairwell once more.
Then came the footsteps. Slow. Measured. Heavy.
The steel door was kicked off its warped hydraulic track with a screech of tearing metal.
Adrian stood in the opening.
His suit jacket was gone. His white dress shirt was drenched in blood—none of it his own—and his knuckles were split to the bone. In his right hand, he held a heavy .45 automatic, the slide locked back, empty.
He looked into the dust-filled room until his eyes found Evelyn lying on the floor, the MPX still clutched in her right hand, her broken arm taped to her ribs, her face covered in white concrete powder.
Adrian dropped the weapon.
He fell to his knees beside her, his massive frame shaking with a tremor so violent it seemed to rattle the floor plates.
“Evie,” he choked out, his voice cracking into something small, broken, and terrified. “Evie...”
He didn't pull her into a crushing hug; he was terrified of touching her broken body. He simply hovered over her, his hands framing her face, his thumbs wiping the plaster dust from her eyelashes, his tears falling hot and fast onto her forehead.
“I’m okay,” she whispered, her voice barely a thread of sound. “Adrian... I’m okay.”
He pressed his forehead against hers, breathing her in—the smell of antiseptic, copper, and dust.
May you like
“They’re dead,” Adrian wept against her skin, the ruthless king of the underworld weeping like a child in the ruins of his empire. “Every single one of them. It’s over, Evie. I swear to God, it’s over.”
***
