Chapter 4 - The Fire in the Forest
I didn't waste another second. I slammed Dante’s head against the oak floorboards, knocking him unconscious, then turned back to the bedroom.
"Sarah! Take the children into the root cellar under the kitchen!" I commanded, picking up Dante’s fell weapon and checking the magazine. "Do not open it for anyone but me!"
Sarah nodded through her tears, scooping up Lily while Ethan scrambled off the bed, using his arms to drag his legs across the floor toward the kitchen trapdoor.
"Dad!" Ethan called out, his voice sharp with worry. "Don't leave us!"
I knelt beside my son for a brief moment, gripping his shoulders tightly. "Look at me, Ethan. Your legs are healing. You have your mother's strength in you. Get in that cellar and protect Lily."
Ethan’s jaw set into a firm, stubborn line—a look I hadn't seen on his face since he was four years old. "Yes, sir."
I shut the heavy oak cellar door over them, pulled a heavy flour chest over the latch to conceal it, and stepped back into the parlor just as the front windows shattered inward.
Automatic gunfire cut through the cottage, splintering furniture, tearing through lace curtains, and shattering oil lamps. Flames from the overturned lamps caught instantly on the dry wooden rugs, sending plumes of thick smoke toward the wooden rafters.
I crouched low behind the stone fireplace, returning fire through the broken window frame. Three men in black tactical gear were advancing through the pine trees, their muzzle flashes illuminating the foggy darkness.
"Valenti!" a voice shouted from the tree line through a bullhorn. "You're outnumbered! Give us the boy and the old woman, and we'll let you die quick!"
It was Sal Valetti’s voice—thin, arrogant, and dripping with cruel amusement.
"You should have checked your flanks, Sal!" I called back, my voice carrying over the roaring flames that were beginning to swallow the northern wall of the parlor.
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and hit speed-dial #1—a button I had never pressed in seven years. It connected directly to the private emergency line of my brother, Marcus Valenti, head of our family’s heavy tactical unit in South Chicago, a man I had been estranged from since Clara’s death.
"Marcus," I said as soon as the line opened.
"Adrian?" Marcus’s deep voice answered, filled with surprise. "Where the hell are you? Your house in the city is locked down—"
"I am at the old northern cottage," I said fast and clear. "Valetti broke the truce. He’s here with twenty men. He killed my guards. And Marcus... Clara was innocent. Dante was the traitor."
A long pause echoed over the line, followed by the heavy sound of a weapon action being racked.
"Holding position," Marcus said, his voice turning to pure ice. "We are five minutes out in the chopper. Don't die before I get there, brother."
I ended the call, tucked the phone away, and reloaded my weapon. The smoke in the room was growing thicker, the heat from the burning wall scorching the skin on my face.
I couldn't stay inside the cottage, but I couldn't abandon the cellar either. I had to create a distraction that would draw Valetti’s men away from the house until Marcus arrived.
I grabbed an unlit glass kerosene bottle from the kitchen counter, wrapped a rag around its neck, lit it on the burning wall, and hurled it through the front window directly at Valetti’s lead SUV parked fifty yards away.
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The bottle shattered against the hood, and a second later, the gas tank ignited with a deafening BOOM, sending a massive fireball skyward into the rain.
In the confusion and blinding light of the explosion, I vaulted through the side window into the wet pine brush.
