Chapter 8 - The Defense of the Stone House
The glass of the cottage windows exploded inward in a long, glittering shower of silver spikes that embedded themselves into the pine cabinets and the plaster walls.
Chloe let out a sharp, terrified wail, her hands wrapping around her father’s neck as Gabriel threw his body over hers, his back blocking the wind and the lead that followed the glass.
“Sadie, take the boy into the fruit cellar,” Gabriel roared over the noise of the gunfire, his right hand lifting the Glock 19 to fire three blind shots through the broken frame toward the garage roof. “The door’s under the rug in the pantry. It’s three-foot stone. They can’t pierce it with the small iron.”
Sadie didn't run. She stood behind the counter, her small frame steady against the recoil as she lifted the heavy shotgun and pulled both triggers at once. The blast was deafening inside the small room, a massive cloud of white smoke and yellow fire that tore through the screen door, sending a man in a dark leather jacket tumbling off the hood of Gabriel’s SUV into the snow drift below.
“I’m not leaving my kitchen, Gabriel!” she shouted, her fingers frantically digging into her apron pocket for two fresh green shells as the wind howled through the broken glass. “Leo’s already down there! Get your daughter behind the stove!”
Gabriel didn't argue. He dragged Chloe across the floorboards, her bare feet trailing through the broken glass, until she was tucked into the narrow space behind the heavy cast-iron Garland range. It was four hundred pounds of solid steel, thick enough to stop a hunting rifle, a temporary island of safety in a sea of flying lead.
“Stay here,” Gabriel said, his green eyes locking onto hers with a fierce, paternal finality that had no room for fear. “If anyone comes through that door who isn't me or Sadie, you use the gun I left in the box. Do you hear me, Chloe? You use the whole magazine.”
Chloe nodded, her pale blue eyes wide with a sudden, mature understanding that had nothing to do with the school in Vermont. She took the silver dinosaur and tucked it into her pocket, her fingers wrapping around the cold steel handle of the extra weapon Gabriel had left on the floorboards.
Gabriel stood up, his massive frame filling the smoke-filled space of the kitchen as he moved toward the door.
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Rocco was already in the yard, his Tenth Street boys answering the North Side crew with the steady, rhythmic thrumming of their own automatic weapons. The snow was turning red in the driveway, the long, dark shadows of the enforcers falling across the drifts like broken pine trees after a storm.
Gabriel stepped out into the blizzard, his Glock barking twice into the gray dark, his voice lost in the wind as the Finch syndicate closed the ledger on the North Side once and for all.
