Chapter 3 - Blood on the CliffsideThe name hung in the air like a rotting corpse.
Viktor Vargas.
The son of old man Vargas—the very cartel patriarch my father had wiped off the board twenty-five years ago. For two decades, the Vargas remnants had scattered into the shadows, licking their wounds, operating in the bruised underbelly of South America and Eastern Europe. I had assumed they were extinct, neutralized by our expanding dominance and federal sweeps.
I was wrong. They had been watching, waiting, and building their strength in the dark.
“How many?” I asked, my voice flat, cold, and entirely devoid of human emotion as I pulled the heavy, custom-engraved Beretta 9mm from the hidden wall safe behind my desk and checked the magazine.
“At least three armored SUVs,” Marcus reported, pulling a tactical tablet from his jacket and bringing up the estate's perimeter camera feeds. “They blew the gate security box with a directional charge. Our outer guards are down—unconscious, thankfully, but out of the fight. They bypassed the main gatehouse and are heading straight up the private cliffside drive.”
I looked at the monitor. The grainy infrared cameras showed three black, matte-finished Mercedes G-Wagons carving their way up the winding coastal road toward the mansion, their high beams cutting blinding swaths through the foggy twilight.
“They didn't come to negotiate,” I muttered, locking the slide of my pistol with a sharp, metallic clack.
“No, boss,” Marcus agreed, his hand resting on the Sig Sauer at his hip. “Vargas knows your mother is in failing health. Word must have leaked out through our medical procurement channels. They think the Hale empire is vulnerable, and they've come to finish what their fathers started.”
My gaze shifted instantly from the tactical monitor to the center of the room.
My mother sat quietly in her wheelchair, her face pale but remarkably composed. Decades of living as a mob boss’s wife and a syndicate matriarch had trained her for moments like this. She didn't scream. She didn't panic.
Beside her, Clara stood frozen, her eyes wide with terror as she stared at the security screens flashing red warning lights across the room.
“Marcus,” I commanded, my tone absolute. “Take my mother down to the subterranean panic room beneath the wine cellar. Seal the blast doors. Do not open them for anyone, under any circumstances, until I give you the code verbally over the secure comms.”
“Boss, I can't leave you up here alone to face an entire strike team,” Marcus protested, stepping forward.
“That wasn't a request, Marcus—that is an order!” I barked, my voice cracking with the authority that kept our entire organization running. “Protect my mother with your life. If anyone breaches that panic room, use the secondary extraction tunnel leading down to the private cove. Understood?”
Marcus gritted his teeth, locked jaw muscles bulging, before nodding sharply. He immediately wheeled my mother toward the private elevator hidden behind the mahogany bookshelves.
“Bennett!” Mother called out as the elevator doors slid open, her voice cutting through the hum of the electronic security systems.
I paused, looking back at her one last time.
“Don't you dare die out here,” she whispered, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “You owe me too many explanations.”
“I’ll be right behind you, Mother,” I lied smoothly, offering her a tight, reassuring smile.
The elevator doors closed, sealing them inside the descending shaft.
I turned back around to find Clara still standing by the door. She hadn't run to the panic room. She hadn't cowered in the corner. She was staring at me, her chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow breaths.
“Why didn't you go with them?” I snapped, stepping over to the heavy oak door and locking it from the inside.
“Because,” Clara said, her voice shaking slightly but holding a stubborn, fierce courage that caught me off guard, “if Viktor Vargas is here to finish what his family started twenty-five years ago... then this is about my mother, too. I'm not hiding.”
I stared at her for a long second, a strange, grim chuckle escaping my lips.
“You really are Julianne’s daughter, aren't you?” I muttered, walking over to the cabinet beneath my desk and pulling out a heavy, tactical Remington shotgun and a bandolier of buckshot shells, which I tossed across the room toward her.
Clara instinctively caught the heavy bandolier, stumbling back a step under its weight, her eyes widening as she stared at the matte-black metal.
“Can you shoot?” I asked coldly, slamming a fresh magazine into my Beretta.
“My uncle took me hunting in the Ozarks when I was sixteen,” she replied, her fingers automatically looping the heavy canvas straps over her shoulder. “I know how to handle recoil.”
“Good,” I said, walking to the heavy oak doors and flicking off the master light switch in the study, plunging the room into total darkness save for the pale, silver moonlight streaming through the French windows. “Because we're about to turn this house into a graveyard.”
Downstairs, the heavy front mahogany doors of the mansion exploded inward with a deafening, thunderous crash.
The heavy oak splintered into a thousand jagged shards as heavy boots pounded across the marble foyer floor. Shouts echoed up the grand staircase—harsh, foreign commands in Spanish and Russian, mixed with the chilling clatter of automatic rifles being racked.
They were inside.
I grabbed Clara by the wrist, pulling her silently into the deep shadows behind the massive velvet drapes flanking the balcony doors.
“Stay low,” I whispered directly into her ear, my breath brushing her cheek. “And don't fire until I give the word. Let them think the house is empty.”
The heavy footsteps drew closer, marching with arrogant, unhesitating speed down the second-floor hallway. The boots stopped right outside my study door.
A heavy, booted kick struck the center of the door panel.
The reinforced lock held for a split second before the frame splintered, and three armed mercenaries clad in matte-black tactical gear and night-vision goggles poured into the room, their suppressed submachine guns sweeping across the empty space.
“Clear!” one of them barked in harsh Spanish.
“Check the desk! Check the safe!” another ordered, stepping further into the moonlit room.
I waited, my heart beating in a slow, rhythmic, controlled cadence. Adrenaline coursed through my veins like liquid fire, sharpening every sense, slowing time down to a crawl.
When the third mercenary stepped past the velvet drapes, turning his back directly toward us, I moved.
In one fluid, lightning-fast motion, I stepped out from the shadows, clamped my left hand over his mouth to choke off any sound, and drove the heavy steel barrel of my Beretta upward beneath the soft tissue of his tactical helmet, pulling the trigger with a dull, suppressed thump.
The man collapsed instantly, dead before he hit the Persian rug.
Before his two comrades could turn around, I raised the pistol and squeezed the trigger twice more. The second mercenary dropped with a round through his chest plate.
The third mercenary spun around wildly, his rifle raising toward my chest—
BOOM!
The deafening roar of Clara’s Remington shotgun shattered the silence of the study. The heavy buckshot caught the mercenary squarely in the shoulder, lifting him entirely off his feet and throwing him backward through the glass coffee table in a shower of splintered wood and shattered crystal.
Silence descended over the room once more, broken only by the thin wisp of gray smoke curling from the barrel of Clara’s shotgun.
Clara stood frozen, her chest heaving, the recoil having knocked her back against the wall. She stared down at the downed mercenary at her feet, her hands trembling violently around the wooden stock of the gun.
I stepped over the body, walking quickly to the shattered doorway, peering down into the grand foyer below.
Four more armed men were fan-spreading across the lower level, shouting back and forth in confusion as they realized their advance team had gone silent.
And standing in the center of the foyer, leaning casually on a silver-topped walking cane, was a tall, immaculately dressed man with slicked-back dark hair and a predatory, serpentine smile.
Viktor Vargas.
“Bennett, my boy!” Viktor called out, his voice echoing mockingly off the marble walls of my home. “Come out, come out, wherever you are! Let's settle a family score that's been overdue for twenty-five years!”
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I gripped the grip of my Beretta, leaning against the shattered doorframe, my eyes narrowing as I looked down at the man who had come to slaughter my family.
The game of hiding was over. It was time to collect the debt.
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