Chapter 7
Nobody moved.
Nobody breathed.
Victoria stood there.
Smiling.
Like she had already won.
Behind her, ten guns pointed right at us.
Richard stepped in front of Leo.
Even injured, even weak, he was a shield.
“Victoria,” he said. His voice was stronger now. Harder. “What have you done?”
“What have I done?” She laughed. A cold, sharp sound. “I did what I had to do. You married me for my father’s connections. You used me to build your empire. And then—when you didn’t need me anymore—you tossed me aside. Tried to leave me with nothing. While this… this mistake… got everything.”
She pointed the gun at Leo.
“I’m not a mistake,” Leo said.
His voice was steady.
No fear.
Victoria laughed again.
“Cute. Brave. Just like your father. It won’t save you.”
She looked at Richard.
“You want to know something, Richard? Adrian was just the puppet. I was the one pulling the strings. I’m the one who planned it all. I’m the one who convinced the board to vote against you. I’m the one who told them where to find you. And I’m the one who told them to keep you alive long enough to transfer the last of the accounts. But now… now we have the boy. We have his biometrics. We don’t need you anymore.”
She raised the gun.
Aimed it right at Richard’s heart.
“Goodbye, Richard. It was fun while it lasted.”
She pulled the trigger.
Click.
Nothing happened.
Her smile vanished.
She pulled the trigger again.
Click.
Click.
She looked at the gun.
Confused.
“Looking for these?”
Mia held up five bullets.
She had plucked them from Victoria’s gun while we were all talking.
Nobody had seen her move.
Nobody except me.
Victoria’s face went from confusion to rage.
“Kill them!” she screamed at her men. “Kill them all!”
They raised their guns.
But we were already moving.
Rook threw Richard behind a wine rack.
I tackled Leo to the ground.
Mia and Jax and Marcus opened fire.
Suppressed pistols.
Thwip.
Thwip.
Thwip.
Three of Victoria’s men went down before they could fire a shot.
The rest scattered.
Gunfire erupted.
Loud now.
No more suppressors.
Bottles exploded everywhere.
Wine ran across the floor like blood.
Glass shattered.
Wood splintered.
It was chaos.
Absolute chaos.
Rook pulled two pistols from his belt.
Fired left and right.
Every shot hit.
Every shot killed.
He moved through the wine cellar like death itself.
Jax was right beside him.
Moving as one.
Years of training.
Years of combat.
They were poetry in motion.
Violent.
Deadly.
Beautiful.
Victoria tried to run.
Mia caught her.
Hit her once.
Right in the jaw.
Victoria dropped like a stone.
Out cold.
Thirty seconds.
That’s all it took.
Thirty seconds of hell.
When the shooting stopped, ten men were dead or dying on the floor.
Mia was reloading.
Jax was checking the bodies.
Rook was helping Richard up.
I pulled Leo from under the wine rack.
He was covered in wine and glass.
But he was unhurt.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He nodded.
Then he looked at his father.
Richard was pale.
Breathing hard.
His bad arm was bleeding again.
But he was alive.
“Dad?” Leo said.
Richard knelt.
Pulled Leo into his arms again.
Held him tight.
“I’m here, baby. I’m here. I’ve got you. Nobody is ever going to hurt you again. I promise.”
“We have to move,” Rook said. “That gunfire brought every guard on the property running. They’ll be here in two minutes. Maybe less.”
Jax checked his rifle.
“Back the way we came?”
“Too risky,” Rook said. “They’ll be guarding the tunnel by now. We go out the front. Take the cars by the main entrance. Fight our way through. Everybody ready?”
Nobody argued.
We moved.
Richard was still weak.
Rook and Jax half-carried him.
Leo ran beside his father.
Holding his good hand.
We burst out of the wine cellar.
Up the stairs.
Into the main house.
Guards were pouring in from every direction.
We fought our way down the hallway.
Gunfire.
Shouting.
Bodies falling.
We reached the front entrance.
Rook kicked the massive oak doors open.
Daylight hit us.
Bright and blinding.
Three black SUVs were parked in the circular driveway.
Keys in the ignition.
Rook had planned for this.
“Everybody in!” he yelled.
We ran.
Guards were shooting from the second-floor balcony.
Bullets zinged around us.
Marcus took a bullet in the shoulder.
He grunted.
Kept going.
We piled into the SUVs.
Tires screamed.
We peeled out of the driveway.
Three guards tried to block the road.
Rook didn’t slow down.
He hit the gas.
They dove out of the way at the last second.
We were on the main road.
Going eighty.
Ninety.
A hundred.
Behind us, we could see more SUVs pouring out of the estate gates.
Five of them.
Gaining fast.
“Hold on!” Rook yelled.
He swerved around a curve.
Tires smoking.
Mia leaned out the window.
Rifle in hand.
She fired at the lead SUV.
The front tire blew.
It swerved.
Hit a tree.
Rolled three times.
Burst into flames.
Four left.
Jax was firing from the other side.
He took out another tire.
Another SUV crashed.
Three left.
They were getting closer.
One of them pulled up beside us.
A man leaned out the window.
Gun in hand.
Leo reached into his backpack.
Pulled out a small grenade.
One Rook had given him.
He pulled the pin.
Counted to two.
Threw it out the window.
It landed under the SUV beside us.
Boom.
The SUV flipped.
Landed upside down.
Skidded down the road in a shower of sparks.
Two left.
“Where are the cops?” Elena yelled. “Why isn’t anyone stopping this?”
“Victoria and Adrian own the police out here,” Richard said weakly. “Half the force is on their payroll. We’re on our own.”
The two remaining SUVs were right behind us now.
Bumping our rear bumper.
Hard.
Our SUV slid sideways.
Rook fought the wheel.
Got us straight again.
“Jax!” Rook yelled. “The spike strip!”
Jax pulled a metal case from under the seat.
Opened it.
Hollow spikes.
Sharp as razors.
He waited until the lead SUV was ten feet behind us.
Then he threw the strip out the back.
It unfurled across the road.
Both SUVs hit it at the same time.
All eight tires blew simultaneously.
They skidded.
Fishtailed.
Crashed into each other.
Then into the ditch.
We were gone.
Nobody was following us.
Rook slowed down to the speed limit.
Everybody exhaled.
Marcus was holding his shoulder.
Blood seeping through his fingers.
Mia pulled a first-aid kit from the back.
“Let me see,” she said.
She dug the bullet out with a knife.
Marcus didn’t make a sound.
Just gritted his teeth.
She poured alcohol on the wound.
Wrapped it.
“Good as new,” she said.
Marcus grunted.
“Sure.”
Richard had passed out from the pain and exhaustion.
Leo was sitting beside him.
Holding his father’s hand.
Watching him sleep.
“Where are we going?” Elena asked.
“Somewhere even they can’t find us,” Rook said.
“Where?”
“Richard has a place. An island. Off the coast of Maine. No airstrip. No docks. No cell service. Only accessible by seaplane. He bought it after Leo was born. Said he needed a place where the family could be safe. Where nobody could ever find them. Only three people know it exists. Me. Richard. And now you.”
“Will he be okay?” Leo asked quietly.
Rook looked at his brother.
Bruised.
Broken.
But alive.
“He’s tough,” Rook said. “Just like his son. He’ll be okay.”
Four hours later, we landed on the island.
It was beautiful.
Pine trees.
Rocky cliffs.
Crystal clear water.
A small but modern house built into the side of a hill.
Solar panels for power.
A well for water.
Enough food to last six months.
Maybe more.
We carried Richard inside.
Put him in the master bedroom.
Mia cleaned his wounds.
Set his broken arm.
Stitched up the cuts.
She wasn’t a doctor.
But she had patched up enough men in enough wars to know what she was doing.
By sunset, Richard was resting comfortably.
Fever was down.
Color was coming back to his face.
Leo sat beside the bed the whole time.
Holding his father’s hand.
Watching him breathe.
That night, we all sat on the deck.
Watching the sun set over the ocean.
The sky was on fire.
Red and orange and purple.
Zero was still working on the laptop.
“I’ve been through about half the files,” she said. “It’s worse than we thought. Victoria and Adrian didn’t just steal from the company. They were running guns. Drugs. Human trafficking. Using Voss Financial to launder the money. All over the world. For ten years. Richard had no idea. They hid it in the shell companies. Buried it so deep even the best forensic accountants would never have found it.”
“How many people are involved?” Rook asked.
“Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Politicians. Judges. Cops. Other CEOs. This goes all the way to the top. All the way to Washington.”
Rook swore under his breath.
“So what do we do?” Jax said. “If we go to the police, half of them are on the take. If we go to the press, they’ll bury the story. Or discredit us. Say we’re criminals. Terrorists. Whatever they need to say to make people not believe us.”
Rook looked at the house.
Through the window, he could see Leo sitting beside his father’s bed.
“We don’t go to the police,” Rook said. “We don’t go to the press. We handle this the Voss way.”
“What’s the Voss way?” I asked.
Rook stood up.
He looked out over the water.
“An eye for an eye,” he said. “A tooth for a tooth. They took three days of Richard’s life. They hurt him. They scared his son. They tried to kill all of us. So we take everything from them. Every dollar. Every house. Every car. Every bit of power and prestige they’ve ever stolen. We leave them with nothing. And then… we let the world see what they really are.”
He turned back to us.
“Zero—tomorrow morning, you start emptying their accounts. Every last dollar. Move it into accounts we control. Every offshore account. Every hidden trust. Every safety deposit box. Take it all. Then you leak every file. Every email. Every recording. Every photo. Every wire transfer. Send it to every news outlet in the world. Every blogger. Every activist. Every reporter who hates corruption. Flood the zone. Bury them in their own filth.”
“And then?” Mia asked.
“Then we go to New York. One by one. We find every single person who betrayed us. Every board member. Every politician. Every cop. Every soldier who worked for Victoria. And we make them pay. Not with bullets. With the truth. We destroy their lives. Their careers. Their families. Everything they’ve ever built. We leave them so broken they’ll wish they had never been born.”
Elena shivered.
“That’s… that’s a lot, Rook. A lot of people are going to get hurt.”
Rook’s eyes were hard.
“They hurt Richard. They hurt an eight-year-old boy. They burned down my cabin. They killed three of my men back at the estate. They started this war. We’re just going to finish it.”
From inside the house, we heard a small voice.
“Rook?”
Leo was standing in the doorway.
He had heard everything.
He walked out onto the deck.
Stood beside his uncle.
“I want to help,” he said.
“Leo,” Elena said gently. “You’ve done enough, baby. You’ve been so brave. Now let the adults handle this.”
Leo shook his head.
He looked at Rook.
“Dad always said the Voss men don’t send other people to fight their battles. If they want a war… I’ll give them a war. But I’m not hiding anymore. Not ever again.”
Rook looked down at him.
Pride in his eyes.
“Okay, kid. You’re in. But you do exactly what I say. No exceptions.”
“Deal.”
Leo held out his hand.
Rook shook it.
Firm.
May you like
Just like before.
“Tomorrow,” Rook said to all of us. “Tomorrow, the real fight begins.”
