Chapter 8 - The Siege of Hollow Crest
Marcus fled to the only place he felt he still had leverage: Hollow Crest Manor.
He didn't realize I was already waiting for him.
When Marcus crashed through the front doors of the dark, quiet manor, heavy rain pouring down outside, he found me standing in the center of the grand foyer. I was unarmed, holding only a single burning tallow candle in the shadows.
"It’s over, Marcus," I said softly, my voice echoing off the high marble ceilings.
"It’s never over, Julian!" Marcus snarled, his tactical jacket soaked, his hand shaking as he pointed his pistol at my chest. "I gave seventeen years of my life to you and your father! I took the bullets! I did the dirty work! And what did I get? Scraps!"
"You got my trust," I said, stepping forward into the candlelight. "You got a home. A brother. But you traded it for greed."
"Stand back!" Marcus yelled, his eyes wild. "I have the explosives set in the foundation! If I go down, this whole damned monument to the Ashford name burns with me!"
"Looking for this?"
Renata stepped out from the library doorway, holding the master detonator box in her hands. She had disabled the receivers thirty minutes before he arrived.
Marcus froze, staring at Renata in disbelief. "You..."
"You told my daughter I was gone," Renata said, her voice filled with an icy, absolute authority that made Marcus flinch. "You made her cry for three days in the cold. You don't get to burn anything down today, Mr. Doyle."
Marcus lunged toward Renata in a blind rage.
I moved faster than I ever had in my life. I stepped between them, caught Marcus’s gun wrist, twisted it upward until the steel cracked, and delivered a devastating right hook that sent him crashing through the glass coffee table into the hearth.
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Sirens wailed in the distance, blue and red lights flashing through the rain-streaked windows of Hollow Crest.
Marcus lay bleeding on the floor, unable to rise, as federal officers burst through the doors to drag him away in chains.
