Chapter 7 - The Ambush in the Rain
Elias’s combat instincts took over before his brain even fully processed the danger.
He tackled Saraphina to the wooden floor just as a high-caliber sniper round punched through the stone wall and the window, obliterating the brick fireplace into a shower of dangerous shrapnel.
"Down! Stay flat!" Elias roared, rolling onto his back and kicking the low coffee table over to create a makeshift barrier.
The silence of the French countryside was instantly shattered by the deafening roar of automatic weapons. High-velocity rounds shredded the cottage's wooden roof, raining splinters, plaster, and shattered roof tiles down upon them.
"They found the safehouse!" Saraphina shouted over the din, pressing herself against the cold floorboards. "How did they track us?!"
"The SUV," Elias growled, pulling two extra magazines from his coat. "The second car we ran off the road—they must have tagged the undercarriage with an active transponder before they crashed."
Outside, heavy engines roared. Through the shattered window, headlights flooded the clearing with blinding white light. Multiple vehicle doors slammed in rapid succession.
*"Elias Moretti!"* a voice boomed through an external megaphone in accented Italian. *"We have the perimeter surrounded! Come out with the girl, and we'll grant you a swift death! Make us come in, and we'll skin you both alive!"*
Saraphina recognized the voice. It was Anton Castiglione—the current head of the syndicate that had murdered Elias’s family twenty years ago. The man who had financed the hit that gave her the scar on her back.
Elias checked his weapon, slamming a fresh magazine into the well. His eyes were cold, dead, and utterly devoid of fear.
"Saraphina," he said, his voice terrifyingly calm amid the storm of gunfire.
She crawled closer to him, her hand gripping the pistol she had retrieved from the floor. "I'm here."
"The wine cellar behind the pantry leads to an old drainage pipe that empties into the creek half a mile down," he said, loading a secondary weapon and handing it to her. "I'm going to draw their fire through the front terrace. You crawl into the cellar and run."
Saraphina stared at him, her hazel eyes flashing with an anger that rivaled the muzzle flashes outside.
"Did you not hear a single thing we just talked about?!" she hissed. "I didn't take a bomb for you twenty years ago just to watch you commit suicide in a dirt shack in Grasse!"
"Saraphina, this is my fight—"
"I am your Blood Ward, you arrogant bastard!" she snapped, quoting the ancient oath that had suddenly reclaimed its rightful place in her soul. *"My life for yours. My blood for the house."* Isn't that what they carved into my spine?!"
Elias looked at her, stunned into silence.
A heavy grenade smashed through the front window, bouncing across the floorboards toward them.
"Move!" Saraphina screamed.
Elias grabbed the back of her collar, hurling them both backward into the stone kitchen just as the concussion grenade detonated. The shockwave blew the living room doors off their hinges, sending a wall of flame and black smoke billowing through the cottage.
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Deafened, coughing, and blinded by the smoke, Elias dragged her toward the rear exit. But as he kicked open the back door, three heavily armed mercenaries were already waiting in the rain.
***
