Chapter 47 - A Mother's Bare Hands
Elena didn't stab the pen into the paper.
With blinding, savage speed born of sheer maternal frenzy, she drove the four-inch solid steel nib of the fountain pen directly through the top of Victoria Montgomery’s right foot, pinning her soft flesh through her cashmere slipper to the solid oak floorboards.
Victoria shrieked—a high, piercing wail of agonizing shock.
Before the mercenaries could process the matriarch's scream, Christian exploded. He used the distraction to throw his entire body backward, his bound arms catching the guard behind him off balance. Christian drove his forehead into the man's nose with a sickening crunch, seized the fallen submachine gun with his zip-tied fingers, and rolled across the rug.
The room erupted into gunfire.
Julian lunged forward to seize the baby from Elena's arms. "You bitch!"
Elena didn't retreat. She tucked Scarlett safely against her left ribs with one arm, lunged out of the wing chair, and drove her right thumb directly into the fresh, sutured laceration on Julian’s face.
Julian screamed in blinding agony as Elena's fingernails tore the stitches apart, ripping open the wound from cheek to jaw. Blood gushed over his face, blinding his left eye. He stumbled backward, flailing, knocking the glass incubator to the floor where it shattered into a thousand glittering shards.
"Kill her!" Julian shrieked, clutching his ruined face. "KILL HER!"
A mercenary leveled his weapon at Elena.
Christian fired from the floor. A three-round burst ripped through the mercenary's chest, throwing him back into the flaming fireplace. Embers and burning logs exploded across the Persian rug, instantly igniting the heavy velvet drapes.
Smoke filled the library in seconds, thick, black, and suffocating.
"Elena! The cellar door! Behind the tapestry!" Christian yelled, scrambling to his feet as the remaining guards returned fire, chewing the antique bookshelves into splinters.
Victoria was crawling across the floor, leaving a smear of dark blood from her impaled foot, her face twisted into a mask of demonic rage. "Don't let her leave this house alive! Burn it! Burn the whole island down, but get me that child!"
Elena didn't look back. Clutching Scarlett beneath her coat, shielding the infant's face from the billowing smoke, she sprinted through the arched doorway behind the burning tapestry.
She slammed the heavy oak door shut behind her, sliding the massive iron bolt into place just as a hail of submachine-gun fire chewed through the outer wood panels.
She was in a damp, spiraling stone stairwell cut directly into the living granite of the sea cliff.
Cold air rushed up from the depths—air that smelled of salt, rusted iron, and rotting seaweed.
Above her, Christian’s submachine gun barked three more times, followed by a violent thud against the heavy door.
"Elena!" Christian’s voice rasped through the wood. "Open it! Hurry!"
Elena threw the bolt back. Christian fell through the opening, collapsing against the stone steps. He had taken another round to his thigh; a dark pool of blood was spreading rapidly across his jeans.
"Christian!"
"I'm fine... I'm fine," he gasped, forcing the bolt back into the wall with his bloody fingers. "Julian got past me. He's coming down the secondary service lift. We have to go down."
"What's down there?" Elena asked, looking into the pitch-black abyss of the descending stairs.
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"Grandfather's private dock," Christian whispered, leaning heavily on Elena’s shoulder as they began their descent into the dark. "Where the Montgomerys hid their ghosts."
***
