Chapter 9 - THE CONVOY OF FIRE
The rain over Boston Harbor turned into a torrential downpour.
The headlights of the jackknifed semi-trucks cut through the storm like accusing eyes.
Salvatore Russo stood in the center of the wet asphalt, a heavy black raincoat flapping around his boots.
He was fifty-five, with a face like scarred leather and dead, reptilian eyes.
The green laser sight of the RPG launcher was pointed straight at the grille of our armored SUV.
“Ram them!” Damian commanded from the back seat.
His voice was pure ice.
“Boss, that’s an anti-tank rocket!” Luca yelled, his knuckles white around the steering wheel.
“The ballistic plating won't survive a direct shaped-charge hit!”
“He won't fire the rocket,” Damian said with terrifying certainty.
“Why?” Clara gasped, clutching the babies' bassinet against her knees.
“Because Salvatore needs my body intact to claim the council seat,” Damian replied coldly.
“He wants to parade my corpse through the North End.”
Damian leaned forward between the front seats.
“Floor the accelerator, Luca. Aim for the gap between the fuel tanker and the cab.”
Luca didn't hesitate.
He slammed his boot down on the pedal.
The massive V8 turbo-diesel engine roared with six hundred horsepower.
The four-ton armored Gurkha surged forward across the wet bridge at seventy miles an hour.
Outside, Salvatore Russo’s eyes widened through the rain.
He realized Damian wasn't stopping.
He realized Damian was turning the armored truck into a four-ton missile.
Russo dropped the RPG into the puddle, diving desperately behind the concrete jersey barrier.
“Brace!” Damian roared.
He threw his entire body across Clara and the twins, pinning them flat against the leather bench seat.
The impact was cataclysmic.
The steel ramming bumper of the Gurkha smashed into the side of the semi-truck’s cab.
Metal groaned, shrieked, and shredded like paper.
The sound of shattering safety glass was deafening.
The heavy truck shoved the semi aside, sparks spraying sixty feet into the night air.
The Gurkha spun violently on the slick wet asphalt, tires screaming for traction.
Luca fought the wheel with primal fury.
The heavy tires caught asphalt.
The SUV burst through the blockade, rocketing onto the open highway toward the western mountains.
Behind us, a storm of automatic gunfire erupted.
Bullets hammered against the rear ballistic glass, leaving dense white spiderweb craters, but none penetrated the cabin.
Damian slowly lifted his weight off Clara.
His face was inches from hers.
A cut above his temple was bleeding freshly, dripping onto his white collar.
He stared down into her brown eyes, his breath hot against her parted lips.
“Did you hit your head?” he asked, his voice strained.
“No,” Clara breathed, her hand rising involuntarily to touch the warm blood on his forehead.
Her fingertips were gentle.
Tender.
Damian froze under her touch.
The ruthless mafia don looked completely disarmed by the soft caress of a maid’s hand.
His gray eyes softened into something deep, ancient, and breathtakingly vulnerable.
He didn't pull away.
He leaned into her palm, letting out a slow, quiet breath.
“You’re a miracle, Clara Hayes,” he murmured softly.
Clara swallowed hard, her heart doing wild acrobatics in her chest.
“I’m just doing my job, Damian.”
“Stop saying that,” he growled softly, his thumb catching her lower lip.
“You know this stopped being a job the moment you pulled my sons from that fire.”
A groan from the front seat broke the spell.
Marco was leaning his head against the door frame, his face gray with shock and blood loss.
“Boss,” Marco wheezed.
“We got ten miles before the fuel line gives out. The radiator took a hit in the crash.”
Damian snapped back into command mode.
He checked the dashboard gauges.
The engine temperature needle was climbing steadily into the red.
“Take the old logging trail off Route 2,” Damian ordered.
“The mountain safehouse in Ashfield.”
“Nobody knows about that cabin except Vito and me.”
Twenty minutes later, the armored SUV sputtered down an unpaved gravel trail deep in the dense pine forests of western Massachusetts.
The trees stood like towering black sentinels in the freezing rain.
The engine finally died with a heavy hiss of white steam fifty yards from a low, sprawling cabin built of dark river stone and heavy cedar logs.
The forest was pitch black, silent, and cold.
Luca cut the lights.
“Perimeter looks clear, boss,” Luca whispered, scanning the timber through night-vision goggles.
Damian kicked open the heavy door.
The freezing mountain air hit Clara’s face like a slap.
Damian lifted the bassinet with both boys, while Luca helped Marco limp through the wet pine needles toward the cabin’s heavy oak porch.
Damian punched a seven-digit code into an iron keypad hidden inside an old birdhouse mounted to the post.
The reinforced steel deadbolts unlatched with a dull, hydraulic click.
They stepped inside.
The cabin was warm, dry, and smelled of cedar shavings, dried lavender, and old woodsmoke.
Damian locked the three deadbolts behind them and pulled heavy blackout curtains across every double-paned window.
He turned on a low amber lamp in the corner.
Clara set the boys onto a wide, plush wool rug before the stone fireplace.
Oliver yawned, stretching his chubby arms, completely oblivious to the war that had raged around him.
Owen nestled against his brother, sucking his thumb peacefully.
Clara fell to her knees beside them, her hands trembling as the adrenaline finally began to drain from her veins.
Damian walked over to a heavy wooden cupboard.
He pulled out an industrial trauma medical kit and set it on the rough-hewn pine table.
He walked over to Clara.
He knelt on the floorboards right beside her.
He took both of her cold, trembling hands into his large, warm palms.
“It’s over for tonight, Clara,” Damian said softly.
“You’re safe.”
Clara looked up at him, tears welling in her eyes.
“How can we ever be safe, Damian?” she whispered, her voice cracking with exhaustion.
“Russo has hundreds of men. He has helicopters. He has the police in his pocket.”
Damian’s eyes darkened with an unyielding, lethal fire.
He lifted her hands to his lips, pressing a slow, burning kiss against her bruised knuckles.
“Russo made one fatal mistake tonight, Clara,” Damian said, his voice flat with cold certainty.
“What mistake?”
“He thought he was hunting a frightened man.”
Damian leaned closer, his eyes burning into hers.
“He doesn't know that a man who has found what he wants to protect for the rest of his life...”
May you like
His hand moved to the back of her neck, pulling her mouth to his.
“...is the most dangerous monster on earth.”
