Chapter 3 - Blood on the Marble
The deafening pop of suppressed gunfire cracked through the underground level before the alarm could complete a full cycle. Damian caught Elena by the nape of her neck, shoving her down behind the reinforced engine block of the SUV just as a spray of ceramic bullets shattered the glass wall of the adjacent gym.
"Keep your head down!" Damian commanded, his eyes blazing with an instinct honed far beyond executive boardrooms.
Elena pressed her face against the cold concrete floor, the smell of burnt gunpowder and gasoline invading her senses. Through the ringing in her ears, she saw two armed men in tactical gear advancing from the ramp, their weapons raised toward Damian's position.
Damian rose like a phantom, firing two double-taps with surgical accuracy. Both intruders collapsed without a sound. But from the main elevator shaft, three more silhouettes emerged, their automatic rifles spitting lead across the garage.
Elena’s medical instincts flared through the terror. One of Damian’s private guards lay bleeding out near the security console, clutching a ruptured femoral artery. The crimson pool was expanding at a catastrophic rate.
"Damian! Your man is dying!" she screamed over the gunfire.
"Elena, don't move!" he roared, reloading his firearm in a smooth, practiced motion.
Ignoring him, Elena scrambled across the open floor on hands and knees, shards of tempered glass digging into her palms. She reached the fallen guard, ripped off the stethoscope looped around her neck, and used the thick rubber tubing as an improvised tourniquet, twisting it with all her strength around the man's upper thigh.
"Hold this! Press down!" she instructed the delirious guard, using her bare hands to pack the wound with the hem of her scrub top.
A shadow fell over her.
Elena looked up, her blood running cold. A masked operative was standing over her, the barrel of his rifle aimed directly between her eyes.
A deafening shot echoed off the walls. The operative dropped dead to his knees, collapsing beside her. Damian stood above him, smoke curling from his weapon, his chest heaving under his tailored suit. His eyes locked onto hers—a mixture of sheer disbelief and unvarnished panic.
"Are you insane?" he breathed, his hand reaching down to hoist her effortlessly to her feet. "You almost died for a hired mercenary!"
"I took an oath!" she screamed back, trembling as she stared at the blood on her fingers. "I don't choose who lives and dies based on your corporate wars!"
Damian stared at her, the hard lines of his face softening for the briefest instant. Before he could speak, his chief of security, a scarred veteran named Marcus, ran into the garage flanked by six heavily armed defenders.
"Perimeter clear, Mr. Blackwood," Marcus reported breathlessly. "The secondary breach team was neutralized at the western terrace. These were Castiglione's elite hounds. They weren't trying to capture her—they came with kill orders."
Damian wiped a speck of blood from his jawline, his expression turning to stone. "Kill orders? Hector said he wanted the manifest."
"Castiglione changed his mind the moment you claimed her, sir," Marcus answered grimly, offering an encrypted tablet. "Look at this intercept from five minutes ago."
Damian took the tablet, his eyes scanning the decrypted text. His knuckles turned white against the glass screen.
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"What is it?" Elena asked, dread pooling in her stomach. "What does it say?"
Damian looked up, his jaw set in a grim, immovable line. "Hector didn't track us. The leak came from inside this house. Someone gave them the security codes to the underground vault."
