Chapter 3 - THE SIEGE OF THE LODGE
Victor moved with a speed that defied his age. Before Marco’s transmission even cut out, Victor grabbed his assault rifle, strapped two extra magazines to his belt, and pointed toward the back passage.
"Doctor Evans! Get Hannah and the baby into the safe room beneath the wine cellar now!" Victor barked.
"No!" I shouted, rushing to Lily’s room and scooping her sleeping form into my arms, bundling her tightly in her wool blanket. "I am not leaving you, Victor! If they take you, we won't survive anyway!"
"Hannah, listen to me!" Victor grabbed my shoulders, forcing me to look at him. His eyes were fierce, but beneath the steel was a terrible tenderness. "I lost your mother because I couldn't protect her. I will not lose you. The safe room is made of six-inch reinforced steel plating. It has its own air filtration system. Nothing gets through that door from the outside."
"And what about you?" I cried out as the first heavy explosion shattered the roof of the upper floor. Dust and wooden beams rained down into the hallway.
"I am going to finish a war that should have ended twenty-four years ago," Victor said grimly.
He shoved us down the hidden stairwell behind a bookshelf, slamming the heavy iron door shut behind us. Doctor Evans pulled a lever from the inside, engaging four massive steel deadbolts.
We were plunged into the dim red light of the underground bunker. The walls shook violently as heavy mortar fire pounded the structure above. The sound of automatic gunfire was relentless—a terrifying symphony of shouting men, shattering glass, and heavy explosions.
I sat in the corner of the bunker, pressing Lily against my chest, humming a soft lullaby to keep her from waking up to the sound of war. Doctor Evans paced back and forth, clutching a defibrillator like a shield.
Ten minutes felt like ten centuries. The gunfire above slowly began to shift from chaotic exchanges to methodical, single-shot volleys. Then came a terrible, deafening silence.
For five agonizing minutes, not a single sound echoed through the concrete ceiling.
"Is it over?" Doctor Evans whispered, his voice trembling. "Did... did Mr. Moretti win?"
Suddenly, a loud metallic THUD echoed against the blast door of our bunker.
I stiffened, holding my breath.
THUD. THUD.
The sound of a heavy blow torch hissed against the steel frame. Sparks began to shower down through the seams of the door. Someone was cutting through the heavy lock mechanism from the outside.
"They're coming in," Doctor Evans gasped, backing away into the corner.
I looked around the small bunker desperately. There were no weapons. No exit routes. Only crates of canned rations and medical supplies.
I looked down at Lily. Her pale, beautiful face was still peaceful, oblivious to the nightmare unfolding around us. The thought of Julian Vance’s men taking her away—the thought of my daughter growing up in the dark, cruel world my mother had fled—ignited a fire inside me that I didn't know I possessed.
I grabbed a heavy iron fire extinguisher mounting bracket from the wall, wrenching it free from the concrete. I stood directly in front of the door, holding the heavy iron bar with both hands, my feet planted firm on the ground.
"Hannah, what are you doing?" Doctor Evans sobbed.
"If they want my daughter," I whispered, my teeth grit, "they will have to kill me first."
With a final, loud CRACK, the central deadbolts yielded. The heavy steel door was kicked open, swinging wide on its hinges.
Smoke poured into the room. A tall figure stepped through the haze, clad in a tactical vest, holding a smoking rifle in one hand.
I raised the heavy iron bar, screaming with all the rage and terror in my heart, and swung it down with everything I had.
A hand caught the iron bar mid-air with ironlike strength.
"Easy, Hannah," a deep, weary voice growled through the smoke. "You've got your mother's temper."
I froze.
Through the clearing smoke, Victor Moretti stood before us. His suit jacket was gone, his black shirt was torn and covered in soot and blood, and a cut bled freely above his left eye—but he was alive. Behind him, Marco and three surviving Moretti enforcers stood guard, their weapons lowered, the hallway behind them littered with defeated attackers.
I dropped the iron bar. It hit the concrete floor with a loud metallic clatter.
Tears spilled down my cheeks as I collapsed against Victor’s chest. He wrapped his arm around me and Lily, holding us close as the tension in his rigid shoulders finally dissolved.
"It's over, Hannah," Victor whispered, his rough hand stroking my hair. "The lodge held. Vance’s strike team is destroyed."
"Is Julian... is he dead?" I sobbed.
Victor pull back slightly, his expression hardening into cold granite.
"No," Victor said, his eyes burning with a dark, ruthless focus. "Julian wasn't here. He sent his men from a command bunker in Manhattan. But he made a fatal mistake."
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Victor held up a tactical satellite phone he had taken from the fallen commander of the mercenary unit.
"He stayed on the line to listen to the breach," Victor said. "And now I have his exact coordinates. Tonight, Hannah... we end the Vance empire forever."
