Chapter 14 - Blood and Salt
Salvatore didn't hesitate. He leaned around the steel doorframe of my inner office and fired three rapid shots, forcing Lucian and his two flanking mercenaries to dive behind the granite reception counter as ceramic tiles exploded into dust.
"Rear exit, Elena! Now!" Salvatore hissed, ejecting his spent magazine and slapping a fresh one home with the heel of his hand. "There’s an armored transport idling in the loading bay!"
Another sharp, tearing contraction seized my lower abdomen, dropping me to one knee on the industrial carpet. I clamped a hand over my mouth to smother the scream, tasting copper and iron as my teeth bit through my lower lip. The baby was dropping. The pressure was unbearable, a fierce, internal tide demanding to be born amidst the gunfire and smell of burning cordite.
"I can't run, Salvatore," I gasped, dragging myself up using the edge of an iron filing cabinet, my breathing ragged and shallow. "The water broke. He’s coming."
Salvatore’s weathered face went completely pale. The hardened underboss, who had survived three decades of mafia gang wars without flinching, looked more terrified by my labor than by the five armed gunmen advancing down the hallway.
"Holy Mother of God," Salvatore whispered, his eyes wide.
He didn't panic. He reached into his tactical vest, pulled two fragmentation grenades from their clips, and yanked the pin on the first one with his teeth. He tossed it through the doorframe into the narrow corridor.
"Fire in the hole!"
BOOM!
The concussive blast blew the drywall out into the hall, filling the corridor with blinding white gypsum dust and the screams of two wounded mercenaries.
Before the dust could settle, the high-pitched roar of a twin-turbocharged V8 engine tore through the storm outside.
A heavy, custom-armored black SUV smashed through the exterior glass wall of the terminal warehouse, crushing the mercenaries' parked utility van against an industrial pillar in a shower of sparks, sheared metal, and screams.
The driver’s door was kicked open with enough violent force to bend the hinges.
Mateo emerged from the vehicle like a vengeance-fueled demon.
He didn't take cover. He held a high-capacity combat shotgun in one hand, pumping twelve-gauge buckshot into the corridor with terrifying, rhythmic, military-grade precision.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Two mercenaries trying to flank the inner office were shredded by heavy lead, thrown backward through the office partitions like ragdolls. Mateo discarded the empty shotgun, drew his customized .45, and closed the distance with terrifying speed, driving the steel slide of his weapon into the temple of a third shooter, dropping him instantly onto the bloody linoleum.
Lucian Vance, realizing his assault had turned into an abattoir, scrambled backward through the shattered glass of the entrance, his tailored coat shredded, his face bleeding from flying shrapnel.
"Mateo!" Lucian shrieked, backing toward the rainy dock apron. "You kill me, and the European families will blackball your freight forever! You’ll be nothing!"
Mateo didn't even slow his stride. He lunged across the shattered reception area, grabbed Lucian by the collar of his expensive coat, and hoisted the two-hundred-pound executive clean off his feet with a single arm.
With a terrifying, guttural roar of pure primal rage, Mateo slammed Lucian’s spine against the concrete column, driving his forearm across the man's throat until his eyes bulged in breathless terror.
"You brought weapons into my wife’s office," Mateo whispered, his voice so quiet, so deadly, that it made the rain outside sound silent. "You aimed guns at the mother of my children."
"Mateo!" Salvatore’s voice echoed frantically from the inner office. "Leave him! Leave him, Boss! Elena is in labor! The baby is coming right now!"
Mateo froze.
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The homicidal fury in his ice-blue eyes vanished in a split second, replaced by pure, blinding panic.
He dropped Lucian onto the broken glass like a sack of garbage, not even looking back as the bruised executive scrambled into the rain, and sprinted into the inner office where I lay slumped against the wall, clutching my belly in agony.
