Chapter 4 - The Ambush
The blast threw Declan and Claire to the ground. The smell of smoke and cordite instantly filled the room. In the hallway, gunfire erupted—loud, chaotic, and terrifyingly close.
"Ambush!" Owen’s voice roared through the darkness, followed by the rapid, deafening rhythmic bursts of tactical rifles. "Boss! They’ve breached the front! It’s the Maroni main crew! They must have followed us!"
Declan was on his feet in a second, his survival instincts overriding his shock. He dragged Claire up, shielding her body with his own as wood splinters and drywall rained down around them.
"Marcus! Get down!" Claire screamed into the dark.
"Stay here! Don't move!" Declan ordered Claire, his voice shifting back into the commander who had ruled the city's underworld for a decade. He slipped to the doorway of the foreman’s office, peering into the smoke-choked main floor of the warehouse.
Through the haze, muzzle flashes illuminated the chaos. The Maroni family hadn't come for Claire; they had seen Declan’s SUVs parked in the alley. Victor Maroni, the aging, desperate boss of the rival faction, had realized his greatest enemy was cornered in a vulnerable location without his usual security detail. It was an assassination attempt.
"Owen! Status!" Declan shouted over the din of gunfire.
"Two of our guys are down! We're pinned from the main entrance and the side alley! They brought heavy numbers, Declan! We're outgunned!" Owen yelled back from behind a flipped concrete mixing tub.
A bullet shattered the doorframe inches from Declan’s head. He fired back three times, dropping a silhouetted figure advancing through the smoke. But he knew Owen was right. They were trapped in a kill box.
Suddenly, a weak voice spoke from behind him in the dark room.
"There's... there's a drainage tunnel," Marcus wheezed. The boy had crawled off his cot, holding his bleeding arm, his face pale with terror. "Under the old boiler in the back room. It leads directly to the river port drainage system. It’s tight, but you can get through."
Declan looked at Marcus, then at Claire. He had a choice to make. He could stay and fight, risking Claire’s life in a brutal war of attrition, or he could trust the word of a rival gang member’s kid.
He looked into Claire’s eyes. She nodded. "Trust him, Declan. He’s one of mine."
"Owen!" Declan roared into his radio. "Fallback to the foreman’s office! Cover the rear! We’re pulling out through the floor!"
Owen’s crew executed a flawless tactical retreat, laying down a wall of suppressive fire as they backed into the small office. One of Declan's men was bleeding heavily from a thigh wound; Owen was dragging him by his vest.
Declan slammed the heavy wooden door shut and threw a rusted iron desk against it to barricade it.
"Marcus, where?" Declan demanded.
The boy pointed to a rusted metal hatch in the floorboards beneath a collapsed shelf. Owen and Declan threw the shelf aside, exposing the heavy iron ring of the hatch. Declan hauled it open, a blast of foul, damp air hitting his face.
"Go, Claire! First!" Declan commanded.
"Not without my patients," Claire said, her voice dropping into a hard, unyielding tone that reminded him exactly why he had fallen in love with her. She looked at Owen's bleeding soldier, then at Marcus and the other wounded boys. "We all go, or nobody goes."
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The barricaded door shuddered violently as a volley of shotgun blasts tore through the wood. The Maroni crew was at the doorstep.
"Move!" Declan roared, grabbing the first wounded kid and shoving him down the hatch. "Owen, take the lead down there! Claire, go next! I’ll bring up the rear!"
