Chapter 8 - The Abandoned Warehouse
The ringing in my ears was absolutely deafening as Dominic pulled me up from the debris-covered hospital floor.
The fire alarms screamed through the building, but we were already sprinting down the emergency stairwell to escape the chaos.
The GPS coordinates on my phone pointed directly to an abandoned industrial shipyard on the freezing edge of Lake Michigan.
Dominic activated an emergency beacon on his satellite phone, summoning every single loyal soldier he had left in the city to that exact location.
"They are trying to lure us into a massive trap, Clara," Dominic warned me as we sped away from the burning hospital.
"I do not care if it is a trap," I replied fiercely, my voice trembling with raw, unfiltered rage.
"They have my brother, and I will personally burn this entire city to the ground to get him back."
Dominic looked at me with a profound, undeniable respect, finally seeing the absolute warrior hiding beneath the cheap nanny uniform.
We arrived at the rusted, decaying shipyard just as dozens of black SUVs containing Dominic's heavily armed loyalists swarmed the perimeter.
A fierce, brutal firefight immediately erupted in the pouring rain, bullets sparking against the massive metal shipping containers.
Dominic and I used the violent distraction to slip completely unnoticed through a broken side door of the main warehouse.
The cavernous building was dark and freezing, smelling strongly of stagnant water and decaying fish.
In the center of the massive room, illuminated by a single glaring spotlight, Tyler was tied securely to a wooden chair.
He looked incredibly pale and terrified, but he was miraculously unharmed, breathing heavily through his oxygen cannula.
I sprinted frantically toward him, ignoring the extreme danger, and began furiously untying the thick ropes binding his wrists.
"Clara, look out!" Tyler screamed weakly, his wide eyes staring in absolute terror at the shadows behind me.
I spun around and raised my pistol, fully prepared to pull the trigger on whichever Moretti thug stepped into the light.
But the person who walked out of the darkness was not a heavily armed mobster or a ruthless assassin.
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It was Elena Vale, Dominic's supposedly dead wife, looking perfectly healthy and holding a sleek silver handgun aimed directly at my heart.
"Step away from the boy, Clara," Elena commanded coldly, her elegant features twisted into a mask of pure, selfish malice.
