Chapter 6 - The Siege of the Conservatory
By midnight, the storm outside had turned violent. Thunder shook the heavy glass panes of the conservatory, and rain lashed against the stone walls like thrown gravel.
I sat in the nursery upstairs, holding Clara close in the rocking chair. Downstairs, Marcus and five armed guards were stationed at key access points around the mansion. The security grid was running on secondary generator power as a precaution against the storm.
Suddenly, the white noise machine flickered and died.
The soft ambient lights in the room plunged into complete, suffocating darkness. The backup emergency red lights clicked on two seconds later, bathing the nursery in a bloody, ominous glow.
My heart slammed against my ribs. I stood up instantly, strapping Clara into her front-facing baby carrier against my chest, covering her completely with a heavy cashmere shawl.
The internal comms earpiece in my ear clicked with static.
"Mrs. Sterling!" Marcus’s panicked voice came through the speaker. "Perimeter fence line three has been cut! We've lost main power and external camera feeds! Stay in the panic room—"
The sound of a heavy explosion rocked the eastern wing of the house, cutting off Marcus’s sentence in a burst of deafening static. The floor shook beneath my feet, dust drifting down from the ceiling plaster.
They were inside.
I didn't waste a second. I pulled a small, sleek 9mm pistol from the hidden compartment behind the nursery bookshelf—a weapon Riston had taught me to use during my first month living at the estate. I racked the slide, chambering a round, and backed toward the reinforced steel door of the master bedroom suite.
Footsteps echoed down the long marble hallway outside. Heavy, tactical boots.
"Maya!" a smooth, taunting voice called out through the darkness. The voice carried a sharp, aristocratic drawl that sounded terrifyingly similar to Riston’s, but twisted with a dark, manic edge. "Come out, come out, little sister-in-law! Grandmother told me so much about you! She said you have quite a slap!"
Julian.
I stood pressed against the wall beside the heavy oak door, my hands steadying the gun, my breathing forced into long, quiet counts. Clara was dead silent against my chest, as if she intuitively knew that her life depended on her quietness.
The bedroom door handle jiggled once. Then twice.
BOOM!
The lock shattered inward under a heavy kick. A tall man in a dark tactical jacket stepped into the red-lit room, holding a suppressed automatic pistol. He had silver-streaked hair, dark eyes, and a sharp, cruel smile stretching across his face.
"Found you," Julian purred, raising his weapon.
Before he could pull the trigger, I stepped around the frame and fired three quick shots into the center of his body.
The heavy ceramic plates of his tactical vest absorbed the impacts, forcing him back two steps with a loud grunt. He stumbled, his gun sliding across the hardwood floor.
"You crazy bitch!" he spat, clutching his chest in shock.
I didn't wait for him to recover. I raised the gun, aiming directly for his unarmored head. "Step back, Julian. Or the next one goes right between your eyes."
Julian froze, staring down the barrel of my gun. The arrogant, mocking grin vanished from his face, replaced by a sudden, wild realization that he was dealing with a woman who had nothing left to lose.
"You think you've won?" Julian rasped, slowly raising his hands as he backed toward the open doorway. "My men have cleared the ground floor! Riston is trapped downtown in an ambush at the docks! You're alone, girl!"
"I'm never alone in my house," a dark, icy voice spoke from the hallway behind him.
Julian’s head snapped back just as a heavy carbon-fiber tactical baton struck him across the side of his neck with a sickening crack.
Julian crumpled to the floor like a sack of stones.
Riston stepped over his brother's unconscious body, his face covered in soot, his clothes soaked with rain, holding a heavy tactical shotgun in his left hand. Behind him stood Marcus and four bloody, exhausted guards.
Riston dropped the weapon, rushing across the room and pulling me and Clara into his arms with a force that nearly knocked the wind out of me.
"Are you hit?" Riston gasped into my hair, his body trembling violently. "Did he touch you?"
"We're okay," I sobbed, the adrenaline finally washing out of my system as I rested my head against his shoulder. "We're okay, Riston. I shot him."
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Riston pulled back slightly, looking down at his brother lying motionless on the floor, then looked back at me with a look of pure, breathtaking pride.
"That's my girl," Riston whispered.
