Chapter 2 - Smoke, Blood, and ShadowsThe detonation was deafening.
A blinding wall of magnesium-white light tore through the living room, followed instantly by a concussive shockwave that shattered the floor-to-ceiling French doors, sending razor-sharp shards of glass raining down like crystal sleet.
"Down!" Marcus bellowed, lunging forward with superhuman reflexes.
He slammed his heavy frame over Lily and little Emma, shielding them with his own body as the shockwave threw heavy mahogany chairs backward.
Adrian didn’t drop. He didn't blink.
Through the searing white smoke and the acrid smell of sulfur, his eyes remained locked on the spot where Vanessa had been standing. The heavy velvet drapes were billowing wildly from the shattered window frame, and the sound of rubber screeching against gravel echoed from the circular driveway outside.
She was running.
"Marcus!" Adrian roared, his voice cutting through the ringing in his ears.
"I'm on her!" Marcus shoved Lily gently toward her weeping nanny. "Rachel, take the girls into the panic room behind the library. Do not open it for anyone. Do you hear me? Anyone except me or Vale."
"Go! Go!" Rachel sobbed, scooping up Emma while grabbing Lily by the arm and dragging her toward the heavy mahogany doors at the far end of the hall.
Adrian didn't wait. He vaulted over a splintered coffee table, his hand sliding inside his wool vest to pull a matte-black Glock 19. His long strides ate up the distance to the ruined French doors in seconds.
The afternoon sunlight outside was blinding, cutting through a thick haze of white smoke pouring from the window frame. Outside, parked in the center of the gravel drive, a black unmarked Audi A6 with its engine roaring was already spinning its tires, kicking up a storm of dirt and stone.
Vanessa was already in the passenger seat. Behind the wheel sat a man with a jagged, ugly white scar running from his left jawline all the way down into the collar of his black turtleneck.
The man with the scar.
The exact description Claire had whispered on the recording moments before her death.
"Vale!" Marcus yelled, bursting through a side door with two of his personal security detail flanking him, submachine guns raised. "We've got the perimeter blocked at the main gates—"
"They aren't going to the gates," Adrian said coldly, his eyes narrowing as he watched the Audi's front wheels cut hard to the left, tearing across the immaculate, manicured lawns, crushing million-dollar rose bushes beneath its treads, and heading straight for the dense timberline of the forest that bordered the estate.
"Cut them off at the old logging road," Adrian ordered, sprinting toward his own vehicle—a bulletproof, matte-black Mercedes-AMG G63 idling near the garage.
"Boss, it’s a trap," Marcus warned, sliding into the driver's seat as Adrian ripped the passenger door open and climbed in beside him. "The logging road is a dead end. It leads straight down to the abandoned shipping yards by the lake. Nobody goes down there unless they want to disappear."
Adrian loaded a fresh magazine into his Glock with a sharp clack.
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"Good," Adrian whispered, his voice dropping an octave into a register that made even Marcus—a man who had killed for Vale for decades—swallow hard. "Because I'm tired of looking for ghosts. Today, I want bodies."
The G63’s twin-turbo V8 engine roared to life with a deafening growl. The heavy SUV launched forward, tearing down the gravel path, smashing through a wooden security gate as if it were made of toothpicks, and plunging into the dark, tangled shadows of the Lake Forest woods.
