Chapter 4 - The Strike in the Rain
The world seemed to narrow down to the space of ten feet between Adrian and the two men standing by the sedan. The rain hissed against the pavement, turning the streetlights into blurred halos of amber and grey.
Cassia froze half a dozen steps behind Adrian, her heart hammering against her ribs so violently she felt dizzy. “Adrian, don't!” she cried out, terrified that this was the moment her nightmare finally caught up with her, right on her own front lawn.
The taller of the two men—the one with the scarred cheek—laughed, a harsh, grating sound that cut through the hiss of the rain. He didn't pull a gun; instead, he kept his hands visible, spreading them wide in a mock gesture of surrender.
“You think you can just walk up here and clean house, Vale?” the scarred man sneered, his eyes darting past Adrian toward Cassia. “You think your little girlfriend and her bastard child are safe just because you showed up with a piece?”
Adrian’s movement was too fast to track.
There was no warning, no negotiation, no hesitation. In a single fluid motion, Adrian closed the distance between them, his left hand lashing out to grab the man by the throat while his right hand brought the butt of the pistol down with bone-cracking force against the side of the second man’s head.
The second man dropped like a felled tree into the wet gutter, unconscious before he hit the ground.
The scarred man clawed frantically at Adrian’s grip, his face turning purple as Adrian lifted him an inch off the pavement with one hand, his fingers sinking into his windpipe like a steel vice.
“Who sent you?” Adrian’s voice was barely a whisper, but it carried a lethal, freezing intensity that made Cassia’s blood run cold.
“Go to hell...” the man choked out, his eyes bulging as he tried to reach for a knife at his belt.
Adrian didn’t hesitate. With a cold, ruthless efficiency, he swept the man’s legs out from under him and slammed him hard against the side of the sedan, the metal groaning under the impact. The man gasped, the breath knocked entirely out of his lungs, and the knife clattered uselessly onto the wet asphalt.
Adrian pressed the barrel of the gun firmly against the man’s temple. “I’ll ask you once more. Who sent you? Is it Moreau? Or does Viktor still think he can reach into my city?”
The scarred man spat a glob of blood onto the pavement, laughing through his broken breath. “You’re too late, Vale... Boss already has eyes on the kid. It’s over.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed into slits of pure ice. Before he could press for more, a sharp, piercing sound cut through the night air from behind them.
A door slamming.
Cassia spun around. The front door of her house was standing wide open.
Standing on the porch, wrapped in a pink dinosaur bathrobe with her curly brown hair sticking up in every direction, stood a little girl with wide, frightened grey eyes that looked up at the rain and then straight at Adrian.
May you like
“Mommy?” Ellie’s small voice trembled in the damp night air. “Who is that man?”
Cassia’s breath caught in her throat. The world stopped spinning. Every secret, every lie, every mile she had traveled across five years collapsed into a single, agonizing second.
