Chapter 5 - The Siege of the Fortress
Two weeks passed.
Emma continued her night shifts at my estate. She didn't know about the burnt loan contract. She didn't know about her mother's new penthouse suite at the facility.
All she knew was that the debt collectors had mysteriously stopped calling her, her mother was receiving world-class therapy, and her night cleaning shifts at my house had become... quieter.
She still scrubbed baseboards. She still brought me water when the phantom pain twisted my spine. But she had stopped stumbling. The dark circles under her eyes had begun to fade, replaced by a soft, natural radiance that made my heart hammer in my chest every time she walked into the room.
It was a cold, rainy Tuesday at 2:00 AM.
I was sitting in my library, reviewing logistics reports on my laptop, while Emma was dusting the high bookshelves across the room.
"You're squinting," Emma said softly, not looking down from her ladder.
I didn't lift my eyes from the screen. "I'm reading."
"You've been reading the same page for twenty minutes, Mr. Vance," she said, stepping down from the ladder with a feather duster in her hand. "Your eyes are tired. You should sleep."
"I don't sleep," I grunted.
"I noticed," she said, walking over to my desk and placing a glass of warm milk and a single painkiller on a silver coaster. "Drink it."
I looked from the glass up to her face. "You're taking orders from the head housekeeper again? She told you to bring me milk?"
"No," Emma smiled faintly—a tiny, breathtaking curve of her lips that hit me harder than any bullet ever could. "I brought it because you look miserable when you're stubborn."
Before I could reply, the heavy glass windows of the library shattered into a million sharp pieces.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
High-caliber suppressed gunfire tore through the room, splintering the mahogany bookcases and punching holes through the plaster walls.
Emma shrieked, falling backward as glass rained over her.
In a fraction of a second, two years of physical helplessness vanished from my mind. Instinct took complete control.
I hauled my upper body forward, spilling out of my wheelchair onto the carpet. I grabbed Emma by her waist, hauling her small body beneath the heavy, solid-oak desk just as a second burst of automatic fire chewed through the leather armchair where I had been sitting a second before.
"Stay down!" I roared over the sound of breaking glass and howling wind.
Red emergency lights flashed across the ceiling as the fortress's automated security alarms began to wail.
BOOM!
A heavy explosion rocked the front gates of the estate, followed by the distant sound of automatic rifles echoing from the courtyard.
"Danny!" Luke's voice barked over the intercom speaker on my desk. "We've got a breach! It's Malikov's crew! They brought twelve heavy hitters through the south perimeter!"
Viktor Malikov. The Russian syndicate leader who had ordered the sniper strike on me two years ago. He had finally figured out that I was still running the city from my mansion, and he had come to finish the job.
Emma was trembling against my chest, her hands gripping my shirt tightly, her eyes wide with unadulterated terror. "Mr. Vance... oh God... who are they?!"
"They're dead men," I said, my voice dead calm.
I reached under the lip of the heavy oak desk and pulled a hidden lever. A concealed steel panel slid open, revealing an armory compartment fitted with two tactical handguns, extra magazines, and a reinforced bulletproof vest.
I threw the vest over Emma's head, pulling the velcro straps tight around her small frame.
"Listen to me, Emma," I said, taking her face in my hands, forcing her to look straight into my eyes. "You stay beneath this desk. Do not move. Do not make a sound. No matter what happens in this room, you stay down."
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"What about you?!" she cried, tears brimming in her eyes. "You can't... your legs—"
"I don't kill people with my feet, Emma," I said, a cold, lethal grin spreading across my face as I racked the slide of a heavy .45 caliber pistol. "I kill them with my hands."
