Chapter 6 - The Ambush at the Docks
Chaos erupted around the command vehicle. The heavy bulletproof glass held off the initial hail of automatic gunfire, but the sound was deafening, sounding like hail pounding against a sheet of tin.
"They flanked us!" Caleb yelled into his headset, firing back through the vehicle's specialized gun ports. "Secondary strike team, collapse on the command SUV! We are under heavy attack!"
Through the cracked side window, I saw dark figures emerging from the rain-slicked shipping containers surrounding us. Vance hadn't just set a trap inside the warehouse; he had set a secondary trap outside for Dorian's support vehicles.
Suddenly, the rear doors of the SUV were blown off their hinges by a targeted breaching charge. The shockwave threw me against the front seat, my ears ringing violently as smoke poured into the cabin.
Through the haze, a tall man in a heavy trench coat stepped over the ruined doors. He had a jagged scar running from his left eye down to his jaw line, and his smile was twisted and maniacal.
Viktor Vance.
"Well, well, well," Vance drawled, his voice grating and harsh over the sound of the rain. He pointed a suppressed handgun directly at Caleb, pulling the trigger twice before Caleb could raise his weapon.
"Caleb!" I screamed as my head security guard collapsed onto the floorboards, bleeding profusely from his shoulder.
Vance stepped deeper into the vehicle, grabbing my arm with an iron grip and yanking me out into the freezing rain. I screamed, kicking and fighting with everything I had, but he slammed me back against the side of a shipping container, pinning my wrists above my head.
"Alina Cross," Vance sneered, his foul breath hot against my cheek. "Dorian thought he was so clever, hiding you away in his little fortress. But he forgot that I have eyes everywhere."
"He's going to kill you," I spat in his face, glaring at him with pure hatred. "If you lay a finger on me or my child, Dorian will tear you apart piece by piece!"
Vance's eyes widened in fake surprise before a sickening grin spread across his face. "Child? Oh, that is rich! The cold, unfeeling Dorian Cross is going to be a father? That makes this a hundred times better!"
Vance drew a long, serrated hunting knife from his belt, resting the flat of the icy cold blade against my throat. "I'm going to make him watch me take everything from him. Starting with—"
BANG.
A high-caliber bullet shattered Vance's right elbow.
Vance shrieked in agony, dropping the knife into the mud as his arm buckled. He stumbled back, clutching his shattered limb, his eyes wild with sudden terror.
Out of the burning, smoke-filled wreckage of the warehouse stepped Dorian Cross.
May you like
He looked like a devil rising from hell. His dark suit was torn and stained with soot and blood, his eyes burning with an unholy, terrifying rage. In his right hand, he held a heavy assault rifle, pointed straight at Vance's chest.
"Get away from my wife," Dorian said, his voice a low, terrifying rumble that drowned out the sound of the thunder above us.
