Chapter 109 — Blood at the Gate

Chapter 109 — Blood at the Gate
Liam

The dome exploded and the world flipped on its head.

Petals became dust. Crystal chandeliers sang as something tore the air outside, and the garden that’d been dressed in laughter turned into a choke of smoke and chaos. Killian had Amara in a death grip and dragged her through the arch like he was threading her into his own throat. I saw the cut at her collarbone—thin and quick—and her eyes snap to me one last time, bright and steady. Then she was gone, swallowed by iron and shadow.

Everything inside me went quiet except for the single word that kept my hands steady.

Kitten.

“Left tower!” Ricky screamed. Two clean shots punched a man off a balcony; he went down like a broken puppet. Clause had already melted into cover; his breathing was flat and dangerous.

“Center’s a meat grinder,” Clause said. “We cut the perimeter, hug the hedges. Open lawn is a kill zone.”

“Then we don’t cross it,” I said. “We move tight. We cut to the gates.”

We slid along the colonnade, marble between us and the gunmen on high. Each breath tasted of cordite and something iron. Guards spilled out of shadowed doorways like poured black water; pairs of boots thundered on the steps. A waiter slammed into me, tray shattering and spray of champagne painting the stone like a fake sunrise. I didn’t care.

One guard came out swinging a baton. I met him before his momentum finished—elbow to jaw, wrist rip, his baton clattered away. He hit the ground and I kept moving. A rifle cracked; glass exploded from a window and a sheet of confetti burned in its wake. Ricky cursed and moved left, taking angles like a man who’d been doing this his whole life.

We shot together: quick, hard, efficient. Clause cleared stairwells with surgical bursts. Ricky moved in tight, covering my blind side. We were three men with one mind—get across, get inside, pull her out.

“South corridor—main hall,” Clause called. “He’ll funnel her that way. It’s the only covered route.”

I counted on that. He loved the center. He loved spectacle. He’d make her the prize and parade her where he could see us watch. The plan didn’t have time for thought; it only had room for action. So we moved.

A guard on the fountain’s rim swore and thumbed his rifle up. Ricky dropped him with a single, flat shot. Another pair popped out from under the arbor and barreled toward Clause; Clause answered with two perfect bursts and a grunt that sounded almost apologetic.

We reached the inner gate. It was half-open—creaking like a mouth waiting to clamp. Men were dragging crates behind the threshold to build a quick barricade. We hit it like a battering ram.

Ricky fed rounds into the nearest man opening the crates; wood splintered. I slammed my shoulder into a crate and felt the give as someone on the other side fought to hold it. Clause hooked a heel and flipped a crate sideways, creating a short plank and a chokepoint. It was ugly, close, and it worked.

Then the alarms screamed.

Hydraulics answered—mechanical teeth grinding down the fortress throat. The system was old but brutal; blast doors began to bite in segments.

“Gate’s going to lock!” Clause yelled. “We need to be inside—now!”

A man in plate stepped out with a shotgun and leveled. I dropped him with two quick cracks of my pistol, chest forward, breath cursing. A baton cracked my ribs from behind as another guard lunged. Pain like white fire slashed through my side. I kept going.

We were ninety feet from the inner vestibule when a second explosion hit the outer wall and sent a shock that rattled crowns and made chandeliers tremble. Rocks and plaster rained into the garden and men screamed.

Ricky hooked my arm and hauled me around a toppled statue. “Move!” he barked.

“Keep them off the panels!” Clause shouted, pointing to the control plate that would hold the blast door open a few more seconds if we could get someone to jam the relay.

Ricky ran the line. Clause covered the flank. I pushed for the threshold, bleeding warmth onto marble as the world tightened down to the gap in the narrowing steel.

We hit the vestibule together—shoulder to shoulder, all three of us a single wedge of motion. Another squad tried to cut us off. I kicked a man’s gun into the tiles, shoved him into a bouquet of shattered glass and took the next two as they came, fists and bullets and stove-hot pain. Someone hit me across the shoulder and I staggered; red blooming under fabric. I tasted metal and refused to look away.

The blast door had already started to drop in heavy, grinding bites. The gap was closing—six feet, four feet.

Clause fired left, then right, then dove, taking a hit across the thigh that made him curse and bite down. Ricky slammed a man with the butt of his rifle and crushed his wind. We were moving through a narrowing tunnel of air and panic.

Two feet to go. One.

A guard dove across my path with a knife—blind, frantic. I turned and threw my weight, dropped him to the wet marble. Ricky slammed into me as Clause pushed ahead. There was no time to measure. I lunged.

I slid under the last inch of retreating steel.

Something scraped my back—metal kissing wire, leaving a hot, white-hot line that seared through cloth and muscle. My shoulder took the force of the closing plate; the back of my vest grated on the cut. I rolled and pushed, felt a hot strike on my leg where something had bitten through. Pain lanced and spread down my thigh like spilled oil. I rolled out of the scrape and scrambled forward as the door slammed with a final, deafening thunder.

Silence dropped like a stone.

On the other side, the garden was a lung of sound—gunshots, pounding feet, someone shouting curses so raw they felt holy. I crawled to my knees, clinging to the marble as it vibrated under the slam. My breathing ripped shallow. The air tasted of dust and blood.

I pushed myself up and turned, staring at the steel that sealed behind me. A narrow slot showed through the seam; shadows moved beyond it. A fist hammered the metal. Ricky’s shout came through the iron like a thing from under water.

“Liam! You in there? Move!”

Clause was shouting too, voice raw. “We’re outside! Keep the line! We’ll get you a way out, Liam!”

My fingers left bloody prints on the cold metal. I pressed my forehead to it for half a heartbeat. I could hear them—two men who’d given everything to get me this far—cursing to be let in, smacking the steel, thrown into the sudden geometry of being separated by one brutal second.

“I’m inside,” I said, so low they could almost hear me. “I get her out.”

Ricky pounded again, desperation making his words ragged. “We hold the perimeter. We buy you time.”

Clause’s voice cut through, steadier. “When you get her, call. We’ll pull a route.”

“Don’t die, you assholes.” It should’ve been anger; it came out raw and cracked. “Move.”

I stepped back from the door and caught my breath. My shoulder and thigh burned like twin torches. I pressed my fingers to the wound in my leg and felt the slick heat of blood. It was a bloom, big and slow. I wrapped the strap of my vest tighter until the pain folded into something I could carry.

Inside the fortress the air was colder. The lights were clinical; the marble went on and on. The sound of the garden dimmed to a far-off percussion. The building had closed itself like a mouth. It felt like walking into the belly of an animal.

At the first junction I paused and listened—the hum of vents, a distant shout, then silence that throbbed like a hidden pulse. Somewhere ahead, doors moved, cameras tracked, men reformed like the tide. He’d sealed the world out and kept his prize in.

I exhaled slow and brutal, the breath that steadied my hand.

Hold on, kitten. I’m inside.

I started down the corridor toward where he’d taken her, every toe and tendon singing with pain. Outside, beyond the steel, my brothers were trapped in a narrower war. Inside, I had one thing left: the single path to the room where Killian thought he’d show me what he owned.