Chapter 7 - The Boiler Room Stand
The maintenance tunnel was pitch black, smelling of damp coal dust, rusted iron, and the low, vibrating hum of the estate’s industrial heating boilers beneath the floorboards.
Evelyn crouched low, her boots sliding on the damp concrete floor, with Titan moving silently beside her like a ghost in the dark. Every breath she drew tasted like soot and cold iron. Behind them, muffled shouts echoed down the concrete tube.
“She’s in the service tunnel! Cut off the exit toward the lake!”
Evelyn kept moving, her hand buried deep inside her coat pocket, clutching the heavy steel grip of the Browning revolver. She had never fired a gun in her life—her grandfather had always kept hunting rifles locked away in iron cabinets—but right now, the weight of the weapon felt like the only thing keeping her anchored to reality.
They reached the junction where the tunnel split: left toward the laundry room and the main kitchen, or right toward the old drainage culvert that emptied into the frozen shoreline of Lake Geneva.
Before she could choose, a beam of harsh white flashlight cut through the darkness ahead of them.
“There she is!”
A man in tactical gear stepped out from the shadows near the boiler pipes, raising an assault rifle toward her chest.
Evelyn didn't think. She raised the heavy Browning, pulled the trigger with both index fingers clenched together, and closed her eyes.
Bang!
The deafening roar of the gunshot inside the concrete tunnel sounded like a bomb exploding. Plaster and sparks showered down from the ceiling pipes as the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the concrete wall to the left of the gunman.
The tactical officer froze, clearly not expecting the mousy kitchen maid to open fire with a service pistol.
That hesitation was all Titan needed.
The Cane Corso launched himself out of the darkness like a missile, catching the gunman by the tactical vest padding and slamming him backward against the steaming iron pipes of the boiler. The man screamed as his rifle clattered onto the concrete floor.
“Move!” Evelyn yelled, grabbing Titan’s heavy shoulder harness and pulling him forward through the steam and smoke.
They burst out of the drainage culvert into the blinding white fury of the blizzard.
The wind howled across the frozen expanse of Lake Geneva, driving horizontal sheets of snow into their faces. Evelyn squinted against the stinging ice, clutching the blue ledger tightly to her chest. She had no car, no phone, and no safe place to run—just a frozen lake, a hundred-and-fifty-pound guard dog, and a pack of armed mercenaries somewhere behind her in the dark.
Then, through the swirling curtain of white, a pair of high-beam headlights cut across the ice.
A black SUV came sliding to a halt twenty yards away, its tires throwing up plumes of powdery snow. The passenger door flew open.
Gabriel stood on the running board, bareheaded, his dark coat whipping wildly in the gale, holding a submachine gun across his chest. Blood trickled from a shallow cut along his temple, but his eyes burned with an icy, terrifying fury.
“Evelyn!” he shouted over the roar of the wind.
She sprinted across the snowdrift, sliding the last five feet into the open door of the SUV. Titan vaulted in behind her like a massive black shadow, shaking snow all over the leather seats.
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Gabriel slammed the door shut from the outside, yelling to Victor in the driver's seat, “Step on it!”
The SUV’s tires spun, gripped the ice, and rocketed forward into the blinding white night, leaving the Romano estate and its secrets disappearing behind them into the storm.
