Chapter 3 - THE SIEGE OF THE CLIFFSIDE MANOR
“They found us,” Ignacio roared, drawing a sleek, suppressed pistol from his shoulder holster with terrifying speed.
Vargas didn't panic. Decades at the top of the criminal underworld had forged him in fire. He yanked open a hidden panel behind his desk, revealing an armory of tactical rifles, ammunition crates, and encrypted field radios.
“Ignacio, take the eastern wing and secure the panic room! Get the boy out through the subterranean boat tunnel!” Vargas barked, tossing a heavy tactical vest across the desk.
“No!” I yelled, stepping back. “I’m not running! They killed my grandmother, and now they’re trying to finish us both? I want answers, and I want blood!”
Vargas stared at me for a split second, a grim, approving smile touching the corner of his mouth. “God, you really are Esperanza’s grandson.” He tossed me a compact, lightweight submachine gun—a weapon far too advanced for a twelve-year-old, yet somehow it felt shockingly natural in my hands. “Can you shoot?”
“She taught me how to aim with a hunting rifle when I was eight,” I replied, racking the bolt back with a sharp, metallic snap.
Outside the heavy mahogany doors, the sound of automatic gunfire echoed down the corridor, accompanied by the shattering of stained glass and the heavy thud of combat boots. The enemy had breached the main foyer.
“Stay behind me,” Vargas commanded, leveling his assault rifle toward the doorway.
The door splintered inward as a breaching charge blew the hinges clean off. Three heavily armed men in black tactical gear and night-vision goggles swarmed into the room, their rifles raised.
Vargas moved with lethal, terrifying grace. Two shots cracked from his weapon, dropping the lead operative instantly. Ignacio caught the second, while the third swung his barrel toward me.
My heart froze, but my instincts—honed by months of surviving on the razor’s edge of the streets—took over. I dropped to one knee, steadying the barrel against my forearm, and pulled the trigger.
Clack-clack-clack!
The recoil nearly knocked me backward, but the burst caught the mercenary in the vest, sending him crashing backward through the broken doorway.
“Clear!” Ignacio shouted over the din of the alarms. “Boss, we’ve got to move! The entire perimeter is compromised. Mayor Vance sent his private death squad—they’re using military-grade ordnance!”
Vargas grabbed my arm, pulling me out into the smoky, chaotic hallway. Flames were licking up the antique wallpaper, and the air was thick with the acrid stench of cordite and burning wood. We fought our way through the grand gallery, returning fire against shadowy figures darting through the smoke.
We reached the subterranean boathouse at the base of the cliff just as a sleek, black speedboat idled against the concrete dock. But as Ignacio threw off the mooring lines, a red laser dot flickered across his chest.
From the shadows above the dock gantry, a man stepped forward, holding a sniper rifle aimed squarely at Vargas’s heart.
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It wasn't a mercenary. It was Chief of Police Marcus Thorne—one of Mayor Vance’s most loyal lapdogs.
“Drop your weapons, Mateo,” Thorne sneered, his finger tightening on the trigger. “The show’s over.”
