Chapter 5 - The War at the Docks
For the next two weeks, Beatrice Gallagher lived in a world made of shadows, silk, and steel.
She didn't move into the estate permanently, but she spent five hours every evening in the Bloomfield Hills library, forcing Leonardo to sit still, take his medication, and eat real meals instead of drinking espresso and shouting at his lieutenants.
A quiet, strange rhythm built between them.
She learned that he liked dark chocolate, that he read ancient Roman history before bed, and that he had taken over the Castellano family at twenty-six after his father was murdered by a rival syndicate.
He learned that she took her tea with two spoons of honey, that she still woke up at four AM out of habit from her deployment days, and that she possessed a dry, wicked sense of humor that could cut a man down faster than a bullet.
"You're soft on him," Marco grumbled one evening as he watched Beatrice force Leonardo to swallow a bowl of chicken soup.
"I'm keeping him alive so you still have a job, Vance," Beatrice replied without looking up from her medical notes.
But the quiet couldn't last.
On a freezing Thursday night in late November, the war that had been brewing on the Detroit riverfront finally boiled over.
Beatrice was in the estate's private medical suite, organizing supplies, when the alarm sirens began to wail through the house.
Red lights flashed along the corridors.
The heavy oak doors of the library slammed open, and Marco ran through the hall, his face bloody and his suit coat torn.
"They're through the gate!" Marco roared into his radio. "Moretti’s men! They brought thirty guys from the East Side!"
Gunfire echoed across the estate gardens—sharp, dry cracks that Beatrice recognized instantly from her time in the valley.
She didn't panic. Her heart rate didn't even accelerate.
She reached into her medical bag, pulled out a chest seal, three tourniquets, and two field dressings, shoving them into her coat pockets.
She walked out into the main hall just as Leonardo stepped out of his study.
He was wearing a black tactical vest over his clothes, holding an assault rifle in his hands. His wound had healed enough for him to move with his old, terrifying speed, but his blue eyes were wild with fury.
"Beatrice!" he yelled over the sound of breaking glass from the front foyer. "Get to the safe room! Now!"
"I am not going into a box," she said, marching toward him.
"This isn't a hospital floor, Gallagher!" he roared, grabbing her by the arms and pulling her behind a heavy stone pillar just as a spray of bullets shattered the chandelier above their heads. "They came to burn this place down!"
"Then you'd better make sure you don't get shot again!" she yelled back. "Because I am not dragging your big ass out of another fire!"
A heavy oak door down the hall splintered inward.
Four men in tactical gear burst through, weapons raised.
Leonardo didn't hesitate. He leaned out from behind the pillar and fired three precise bursts. Three of the men fell instantly. The fourth lunged forward, bringing his shotgun up to target Leonardo's exposed shoulder.
Beatrice didn't think.
She grabbed a heavy brass antique vase from a pedestal beside her, swung her broad shoulders with twenty years of built-up lifting power, and smashed it directly across the fourth gunman’s face.
The vase shattered. The man went down like a sack of concrete, his shotgun clattering across the marble floor.
Leonardo stared at the unconscious man at his feet, then looked at Beatrice, who was dusting brass fragments off her wool sweater.
A slow, wild laugh burst from his chest.
"I love you," he said.
Beatrice froze.
In the middle of a gunfight, with glass falling from the ceiling, red lights flashing, and men shouting in the gardens outside, the most dangerous man in Detroit was looking at her like she was the only woman in the universe.
May you like
"You are out of your mind," she whispered.
"Probably," he grinned, pulling her behind him as his men flooded the hallway to clear the remaining attackers. "Now get into the basement before I have Marco carry you there!"
