Chapter 49 - The Battle of the Black Palisade
On the dashboard monitors, the live drone feed sent ice through Ethan’s veins.
The Hawthorne mansion—the sanctuary where Sophie was supposed to be safe behind ten-inch ballistic walls and automated defense turrets—was engulfed in a catastrophic military siege.
Three heavy armored personnel carriers had breached the iron perimeter gates. Black-clad private military contractors—wielding thermite charges and heavy anti-material rifles—were sweeping across the manicured lawns. A firestorm was consuming the west wing, sending thick black smoke billowing toward the moon.
Grand Duchess Katerina Romanova hadn't waited for the trade. The moment Ethan had infiltrated the consulate, she had launched a decapitation strike to seize Sophie while the estate was running on a skeleton crew.
"Sophie," Maria gasped, her maternal relief instantly vaporizing into pure primal terror.
Ethan leaned over Nikolai, kissing the boy's forehead. "Dr. Patel, lock this vehicle down. Take Nikolai to the secondary safehouse in Connecticut. If we don't contact you in three hours, initiate Protocol Zero."
"Papa?" Nikolai cried out, reaching weakly for Ethan’s tactical vest. "Don't go!"
Ethan gently took his son's small hand, kissing his knuckles. "I have to save your sister, Nikolai. The sister you were born to protect. I will be back. I swear to you."
Ethan turned to Marcus. "Ram the eastern service gate. We go in hard."
Thirty seconds later, the Suburban tore through the perimeter fence at sixty miles an hour, skidding sideways across the burning lawn. Ethan and Maria exploded out of the doors like twin demons of vengeance, their weapons barking in synchronized lethality.
The courtyard had become a slaughterhouse. Four Hawthorne security guards lay dead near the fountain, but Ethan gave no quarter. Moving with terrifying, cold efficiency, he dropped three Russian mercenaries with headshots before they could adjust their sights.
Maria swept left, firing her submachine gun beneath the chassis of an armored transport, neutralizing two hostiles attempting to flank the main entrance.
They fought their way up the burning grand staircase into the mansion. The air was thick with blinding smoke, drywall dust, and the stench of burning cordite.
At the end of the second-floor gallery, the heavy steel-reinforced blast door of the nursery had been blown off its hinges by a shaped C4 charge.
Ethan sprinted through the smoking breach, his heart in his throat.
Inside, standing over Sophie’s overturned crib, stood Grand Duchess Katerina Romanova.
In her right hand, she held a compact nickel-plated Walther PPK pressed against the temple of four-year-old Sophie, who was curled into a ball on the floor, weeping silently, her hands covering her ears.
"Step back, Hawthorne!" Katerina shrieked, her aristocratic composure completely shattered into psychotic frenzy. "One more step and I paint this nursery with her brains!"
Ethan stopped ten feet away. Maria flanked to the right, her weapon raised, her eyes locked on Katerina’s trigger finger.
"It's over, Katerina," Ethan said, his voice dropping into a chilling, subterranean growl. "We have Nikolai. The antidote is in his blood. He knows who his father is. Your empire is dead."
"If I cannot have the son," Katerina hissed, her finger tightening on the trigger, "then you shall have neither! Caroline's cursed blood ends tonight!"
Sophie looked up through her tears. She saw Ethan. She saw Maria.
And then, the little girl who had barely begun to speak looked directly into the crazed eyes of the woman holding the gun.
"You are not my grandmother," Sophie spoke clearly, her tiny voice cutting through the crackle of the flames. "You are the monster from Mommy's bad dreams."
Katerina flinched in sheer shock at the little girl's defiance.
That millisecond of hesitation was fatal.
*BANG.*
A single shot cracked through the room.
It didn't come from Ethan. It didn't come from Maria.
Katerina Romanova’s eyes bulged in shock. A small, neat hole appeared in the center of her diamond-encrusted tiara. She stiffened, dropped the Walther, and collapsed face-first onto the burning carpet like a felled oak.
Behind her, standing in the doorway of the hidden panic-room tunnel, stood Nikolai.
The four-year-old boy was pale as death, supported by Dr. Patel. In his small hands, he held Ethan’s spare backup pistol, smoke drifting lazily from the barrel.
May you like
He had fired the shot that saved his twin sister.
***
