Chapter 9 - The Ambush at Midnight
The library erupted into absolute chaos.
The first intruder raised his weapon, aiming the laser sight directly at the chest of the man seated in the carbon-fiber wheelchair.
“Don Carmine sends his regards, Marchetti!” the gunman barked, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Maeve didn't think. She didn't calculate odds, she didn't consider her own survival, and she didn't remember that the man in front of her was a ruthless crime lord. All she saw was a man paralyzed from the waist down, trapped in thirty pounds of steel, completely defenseless before an executioner.
With a wild, desperate scream, Maeve threw herself off the velvet settee.
She vaulted across the space between them, her silk robe billowing, and slammed her entire body across Elias’s chest, wrapping her arms around his neck to shield his torso and head with her own flesh.
Pfft-pfft-pfft!
The silenced submachine gun spat three rounds in a fraction of a second.
A searing, white-hot agony tore through Maeve’s left shoulder. It felt as though a red-hot iron rod had been driven straight through her muscle and bone. The concussive force knocked the breath from her lungs, and she gasped against the crook of Elias’s neck, the metallic smell of her own blood instantly blooming between them.
“Maeve!”
The sound that tore from Elias Marchetti’s throat was not human. It was the roar of an ancient, unleashed beast.
In that fraction of a second, the universe inside the library fractured.
Elias’s legs did not remain limp under the cashmere blanket.
With blinding, terrifying explosive power, Elias kicked his boots against the footrests of the wheelchair and launched himself upward. The carbon-fiber chair was sent hurtling backward, crashing into the stone hearth, as Chicago’s most dangerous secret rose to its full, towering six-foot-three height.
He caught Maeve with his left arm before she could hit the floor, swinging her limp, bleeding body behind the cover of the heavy mahogany desk with astonishing gentleness.
Then, he turned toward the assassins.
The two gunmen stood frozen, their eyes widening behind their ballistic masks in sheer, unadulterated horror.
“He’s... he’s standing!” the second shooter stammered, frantically trying to swing his muzzle upward.
“Too slow,” Elias whispered.
Elias crossed the ten feet of open floor in two predatory strides. Before the first gunman could adjust his aim, Elias’s bare right hand seized the barrel of the submachine gun, ripping it sideways with enough torque to shatter the man’s wrists with a sickening CRACK.
Without breaking momentum, Elias drove the heel of his palm upward into the bottom of the gunman’s ballistic helmet. The impact crushed the man’s cervical vertebrae instantly; the assassin dropped like a stone, dead before he touched the Persian rug.
The second intruder backed up, panicking, raising his weapon with shaking hands.
Elias didn't even draw a gun.
He stepped into the shooter’s guard, caught the man by the tactical vest, and hurled him bodily across the room. The intruder slammed headfirst into the heavy stone mantle of the fireplace, cracking his skull against the limestone, and slumped into the glowing embers, motionless.
The room went dead silent, save for the crackle of burning cedar and the ragged, shallow gasps coming from behind the mahogany desk.
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Elias didn't look at the corpses. He turned, his dark hair falling across his forehead, his white dress shirt splattered with crimson.
He rushed behind the desk and dropped to his knees beside Maeve.
