Chapter 15 - The Siege of Blackwood
The icy mountain wind and driving rain howled through the shattered glass of the foyer, scattering papers and turning the polished hardwood floor into a slick, dangerous hazard.
"Julian Vance," Brooke sneered, stepping over the broken glass, her muddy boots leaving dark tracks on the white marble. Her skin was pale, her lips blue from the cold, but her eyes burned with a terrifying, feverish intensity. "The hero lawyer. Did you really think a piece of paper from a judge could keep me away?"
Julian stepped forward, shielding me with his body, holding the iron poker steady in his grip. "It’s over, Brooke. The police are already on the estate grounds. You have nowhere to run."
"I don't need to run!" Brooke screamed, her voice cracking with wild hysteria. She raised the glass bottle in her hand. "If I can't have the legacy, nobody can! My mother built this house! This money belongs to the family line—not to a penniless, gold-digging nobody and her bastard child!"
"Emma is my daughter!" I shouted, stepping out from behind Julian, my knuckles white around the canister of pepper gel. "She has more dignity in her pinky finger than you or your mother ever had! You didn't build anything, Brooke! You tore everything apart with your greed!"
Brooke’s face contorted into a mask of pure rage. "Kill him!" she shrieked, pointing at Julian.
The hired enforcer lunged forward, swinging the heavy sledgehammer toward Julian’s head. Julian dodged swiftly to the left, the hammer whistling through the air and smashing into a wooden side table, splintering it into kindling.
Julian used the momentum to drive the end of the iron poker into the man's ribs. The man grunted in pain, staggering back, but quickly recovered, lunging at Julian again with brute force. The two men collided, crashing to the floor, fighting for control of the heavy iron tool.
"Julian!" I cried out.
Before I could move to help him, a cold hand grabbed me by my hair, yanking me backward onto the slick floor. Pain shot through my scalp as Brooke dragged me toward the shattered window.
"You ruined my family!" Brooke spat, kneeling over me, her face inches from mine. I could smell the sharp stench of gasoline on her clothes. She raised the heavy crowbar above her head. "I'm going to take everything from you!"
In a flash of desperate survival, I raised my right hand and pressed the trigger of the pepper gel canister directly into Brooke’s eyes.
A thick, red stream of high-concentrate pepper gel struck her full in the face.
Brooke let out an ear-splitting shriek of agony, dropping the crowbar as she clutched her burning face, falling backward onto the floor, screaming and thrashing in blind pain.
I scrambled up from the floor, my heart hammering in my throat. Across the room, Julian had managed to disarm the enforcer, pinning the larger man against the wall with a heavy wooden chair locked under his neck until the man gasped for air and collapsed, unconscious.
Breathing heavily, Julian turned to me, his clothes torn, blood trickling from a small cut on his temple. "Clara! Are you okay?"
"I'm fine!" I gasped. "Look out!"
Brooke, completely blinded and driven by pure madness, was crawling toward the discarded glass bottle on the floor. She produced a pocket lighter from her trench coat, flicking the wheel frantically. A bright yellow flame burst to life in the dim room.
"If I go to hell, I'm taking you with me!" she screamed blindly, bringing the flame toward the gasoline-soaked rag.
"No!" Julian shouted.
He leaped across the room just as the rag caught fire. Brooke hurled the flaming bottle toward the library where the panic room was located.
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Julian threw his body into the path of the bottle, knocking it out of the air with a heavy sofa cushion. The glass shattered against the stone hearth, bursting into a roaring wall of fire that consumed the curtains and spread rapidly across the wooden floorboards.
The fire alarms shrieked into life, overhead sprinklers rained cold water down upon the chaos, and in the distance, the blaring sirens of police cruisers echoed through the mountain trees.
