CHAPTER 9: BLOOD AND REVENGE
Time seemed to freeze.
I saw Marcus on his knees, gasping for air, unable to lift his weapon. I saw Marco on the catwalk above, his finger tightening around the rifle trigger. And on the floor five feet away, Dean was crawling toward his dropped revolver, his face twisted in a murderous sneer.
Six years of fear, submission, and terror evaporated from my soul in a single fraction of a second, replaced by a white-hot flame of pure, unadulterated fury.
I didn't scream. I didn't cry.
I raised the pistol Marcus had given me with both hands, brought the front sight alignment straight onto Marco Valenti’s chest on the catwalk, and squeezed the trigger.
BANG.
The recoil slammed into my wrists, but I held my ground. The first round struck the catwalk railing, sending iron sparks showering into the dark.
BANG. BANG.
The second and third rounds tore through Marco’s shoulder and chest. The enforcer let out a choked cry, dropped his sniper rifle, and plummeted twenty feet over the railing, crashing onto the concrete floor with a sickening, final thud.
Dean gasped, freezing on the floor, his hand inches from his revolver as he stared at me in total, paralyzing horror.
He looked up into my eyes—and for the first time in six years, he didn't see a helpless, obedient wife. He saw the woman who had survived him.
I lowered the smoking barrel of the pistol until it was pointed directly between Dean’s eyes.
“Maya... please,” Dean stammered, raising both hands, his voice trembling violently as tears mixed with the blood on his face. “Please, sweetheart... I was forced to do this! They threatened my life! You know I love you! We can fix this!”
I looked down at the man who had broken a mirror across my face, who had let his family humiliate me, who had tried to have my brother murdered.
“You’re right, Dean,” I whispered, my voice completely steady, devoid of any weakness. “We are fixing this.”
I didn't pull the trigger.
Instead, I stepped forward and kicked the revolver far across the warehouse floor into the darkness. At the exact same moment, the deafening chop of heavy rotor blades echoed overhead as three unmarked black tactical helicopters shredded through the storm clouds above the paper mill.
Blinding white searchlights crashed down through the shattered glass skylights of the roof, illuminating the entire warehouse in a brilliant, inescapable glow.
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Federal backup—the true units Marcus had summoned before his radio was cut—had finally arrived. Heavy tactical officers rappelled down ropes through the roof, weapons drawn, shouting commands that drowned out the rain.
Dean dropped his face onto the wet concrete, weeping hysterically like a child as six armed agents pinned him to the floor.
