Chapter 7 - The Gathering Storm at Greystone
The old river road was a treacherous stretch of asphalt even in perfect weather, but under the midnight mist, it felt like a path through purgatory. Logan’s Bentley tore through the curves at eighty miles an hour, its headlights cutting through the gray fog like twin silver knives. Behind him, three vehicles filled with his personal tactical squad kept pace, their engines roaring against the silence of the valley.
In the passenger seat, Marcus was reviewing the live thermal feeds from the Greystone security grid on his tablet.
"They've breached the outer gate, Logan," Marcus said, his finger tracing the red dots moving through the pine trees on the screen. "There are twelve of them. They’re professional shooters—the old crew Vincent kept from the docks. They’ve cut the main power lines to the house. The interior security detail is holding the secondary line at the kitchen entrance, but they’re outnumbered."
"Where are the girls?" Logan growled, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard the leather casing groaned.
"They're in the bunker below the wine cellar," Marcus said. "The door is four inches of ballistic steel, but if Vincent’s men brought hydraulic tools, they can breach it in twenty minutes. We’re ten minutes out."
"Make it five," Logan said, slamming his foot against the accelerator. The Bentley’s supercharged engine screamed as the car slid through a dangerous, muddy curve, its rear bumper clipping a stone guardrail before straightening out toward the grand iron gates of Greystone Manor.
When they hit the driveway, the scene was already chaos. Muzzle flashes illuminated the mist around the porch like erratic fireflies. The sound of automatic gunfire echoed off the stone facade of the house, a sharp, rhythmic thunder that brought back every memory of the wars of Logan’s youth.
The Bentley didn't slow down. Logan drove the heavy armored vehicle straight through the front steps of the porch, smashing into a stone pillar and crushing two of Vincent’s shooters against the balustrade before the airbags could deploy.
Logan was out of the door before the smoke could clear from the hood. He raised his custom steel-framed pistol, firing three rounds into the mist with the mechanical precision of a sniper. The lead shooter from Queens dropped into the wet gravel without a sound.
"Marcus! Clean the lawn!" Logan shouted, moving up the wooden steps of the porch, his suit jacket torn, his gray-green eyes blazing with a fury that made his own men step aside.
The front door of Greystone had been blown off its hinges by a commercial breaching charge. The interior foyer was dark, filled with the sharp, acrid smell of burnt cordite and plaster dust. Logan strode through the ruin, his weapon raised, his ears tracking the sound of heavy footsteps on the cellar stairs below the kitchen.
He reached the kitchen threshold just as a tall, bald shooter named Rico—a man who had served as Vincent’s primary enforcer for twenty years—raised a heavy hydraulic ram against the steel bunker door at the end of the hall.
"Rico," Logan said.
The name was spoken softly, almost gently, but it caused the bald man to freeze instantly. Rico turned around slowly, his hand dropping toward the holster at his hip, his eyes locking onto Logan’s silhouette in the doorway.
"Logan," Rico said, a cold, greasy smile spreading across his face. "Your uncle told us you’d be too busy in the city to notice a little housecleaning. You shouldn't have come up here, kid. This isn't your business anymore."
"Everything inside these walls is my business, Rico," Logan said. He didn't wait for the enforcer to draw. He fired twice, the rounds striking Rico square in the chest before the man’s hand could even clear his leather jacket. The heavy body hit the cellar floor with a wet thud, the hydraulic ram rolling against the steel door with a hollow, metallic ring.
Logan stepped over the body and pressed his palm against the digital keypad of the bunker door, his fingers trembling with a sudden, desperate terror that had nothing to do with bullets.
"Luna? Nova?" he called out, his voice cracking against the silence of the cellar. "It’s Logan. Open the door."
A long, agonizing five seconds passed before the heavy steel mechanism clicked. The door swung open three inches, and Nova’s pale face appeared through the gap, her small arms still wrapped tightly around her one-eared rabbit. Her gray-green eyes looked up at him through the dark, and for the first time since she had arrived at Greystone, she let out a small, soft sob.
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"The monster came back, Logan," she whispered.
Logan dropped his weapon, reached into the bunker, and pulled both girls into his chest at once, his large arms shielding them from the sight of the blood on the floor. "The monster is dead, Nova," he whispered into her hair. "I’m going to make sure it never comes back."
