Chapter 10 - Blood and Snow
Keller was hit twenty minutes into the siege. A bullet tore through his shoulder, spinning him around and dropping him heavily against the woodbox. He didn't cry out; he merely pressed his hand to the wound, his breathing turning wet and shallow.
“Out of ammunition,” Keller wheezed, tossing the empty rifle aside. “Mara... you have to take the children through the cellar tunnel. It leads to the old mine shaft behind the ridge.”
Mara stood between the bed and the door. In her arms, wrapped in a blanket, was a newborn baby girl, crying with lusty, desperate life. Behind her, on the bed, Elena lay pale as marble, clutching little Julian to her chest with what little strength she had left.
The front door did not open with a crash; it swung open slowly on its hinges.
Leander Vance stepped across the threshold, his expensive cashmere coat ruined by snow, a heavy semiautomatic pistol held loosely in his right hand. Two armed men stood behind him, their weapons leveled into the room.
The sight that greeted him was not a den of conspirators, but a slaughterhouse of his own making.
Keller was bleeding out against the wall. Elena was gray-faced, holding his son, while Mara stood like an ancient sentinel holding a child whose umbilical cord had been severed less than ten minutes ago.
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“Julian,” Leander said, his voice trembling slightly as he took a step forward.
“Take another step, and I drop the lamp onto the floorboards,” Mara said, her free hand holding a kerosene lantern over a puddle of oil she had deliberately overturned near the door. “We will all burn together, Leander. You, your legacy, and the truth you tried so hard to bury.”
