Chapter 5 - The Broken Patriarch
"Get down!" Micah roared, throwing his entire body over Delaney and Phoebe.
Damon didn't hesitate. He lunged across the stone floor, shielding Eliza with his broad back just as a second sniper round tore through the wicker cushion beneath her, sending tufts of cotton and splintered reed flying into the air.
Damon felt the searing bite of glass shards slicing into the back of his neck, but he didn't move an inch. He kept his weight braced on his forearms, creating a human cage over Eliza and their unborn son.
Beneath him, Eliza looked up into his eyes. In the chaos, with sirens wailing, glass shattering, and the storm howling through the breached dome, their faces were inches apart.
"Damon," she whispered, her hands finding his wet cheeks. "The children."
"I have you," Damon whispered, his voice broken, stripped of all the arrogance that had ruled the Northcott syndicate for two decades. "I have all of you. I swear to God, Eliza, I will die before they touch another hair on your head."
"Then stop acting like a boss," Eliza said, her voice fierce, cutting through the agony in her body. "And start acting like their father."
A third shot clipped the iron frame above them.
"Wyatt!" Damon yelled, not breaking eye contact with Eliza. "The drone’s thermal optics can't penetrate dense steam! The old boiler valve behind the citrus planters—smash it!"
Wyatt scrambled through the debris, staying low on his stomach. He reached the rusted cast-iron pipes feeding the Victorian greenhouse's subterranean heating system. With two brutal swings of Micah’s iron crowbar, Wyatt cracked the release valve.
A deafening hiss erupted through the conservatory. Scorching white steam blasted into the cold November air, colliding with the freezing rain that poured through the broken glass. Within seconds, a blinding, impenetrable fog filled the entire structure, blinding the drone’s optical sensors and cloaking the ground in an opaque cloud.
The mechanical drone buzzed erratically, unable to lock onto their heat signatures through the superheated steam, before banking sharply away toward the courtyard.
"Move! Now!" Damon commanded, hauling Eliza to her feet.
Eliza stumbled, her knees giving out as another severe contraction locked her thighs. Micah was already there, sliding his thick arm beneath her shoulder on one side while Damon supported her on the other.
"I've got you, Eliza," Micah said, his voice deep and steady, the fiery rebel transformed into an unyielding protector. "Lean on me. I carried two-hundred-pound linebackers all season. You're light as a feather."
A faint, tearful smile touched Eliza’s lips despite the blinding pain. "Don't let your coach hear you say that."
They slipped out through the conservatory's service door, vanishing into the dense rhododendron hedges that bordered the estate's private cemetery. The cold rain soaked them instantly, chilling their skin, but the dense foliage provided natural cover from the perimeter sweep lights.
Ahead of them, less than two hundred yards away, the gothic spire of the family chapel rose into the gray sky.
Organ music—solemn, heavy, and amplified by external speakers—was echoing across the grounds.
"Listen," Delaney whispered, crouching behind a marble angel marking a family crypt. "The funeral started. They're playing the processional hymn."
"Vance and Rusk aren't out here hunting us," Wyatt realized, peering through the iron fence. "They sent the mercenary hit squad to flush us out, but Vance and Rusk are inside the chapel right now. In front of three hundred syndicate leaders."
"Why?" Phoebe asked, shivering violently, her teeth chattering. "If they want us dead, why are they at the funeral?"
"Because of the Northcott charter," Damon said, his eyes turning cold, calculating, and lethally clear. The shock had receded; in its place stood the sovereign commander who had conquered New York's underworld. "Under our syndicate constitution, if the reigning boss is absent or accused of murdering the matriarch, the board of trustees must confirm a successor during Helena’s funeral mass."
"Rusk is going to announce your abdication," Delaney said, her eyes widening in horror. "He's going to tell the capos that you fled with Eliza after being confronted with her guilt! He'll claim emergency executive power under the foundation, backed by Vance's guns!"
"And once the capos swear fealty to Vance and Rusk," Wyatt added, "any order to hunt us down becomes official syndicate business. Every family from Boston to Miami will be hunting us for a bounty."
Damon looked back at his four children.
Wyatt, bleeding from a glass cut on his cheek. Delaney, holding the stolen financial records. Micah, holding up his pregnant stepmother. Phoebe, standing tall despite her terror.
Then he looked at Eliza, whose pale lips were pressed tight, enduring labor pains in the freezing rain to keep their son alive.
"They think we're running," Damon said softly.
Eliza met his gaze. "Are we?"
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"No," Damon replied, reaching down to take Eliza’s hand, lacing his fingers through hers with a strength that felt unbreakable. "We are going to my mother’s funeral."
***
