PART 3 — The Gatehouse
The gatehouse was a squat stone building with one lit window, and by the time we reached it my lungs were on fire and Marcus had gone frighteningly quiet between us, his weight sagging in a way that made Damian’s voice sharpen with something close to panic for the first time all night.
“Marcus. Stay with me. Eyes open.”
“Still here, boss,” Marcus rasped, though it cost him visibly to say it.
The door of the gatehouse opened before we reached it. A broad-shouldered man in a rain-soaked coat stepped out, gun already lowered the instant he recognized Damian, and relief broke across his face like a wave.
“Thank God. We heard the shots start and I didn’t know if—”
“Car. Now, Felix.” Damian’s voice cut through the man’s relief like a blade. “Marcus is bleeding out and there are at least sixteen of Castellano’s people inside my house.”
Felix didn’t waste a second on shock. He was already moving toward a black SUV parked in the shadow of the gatehouse, engine humming, clearly kept running for exactly this kind of night. Between the three of us we got Marcus into the back seat, and I climbed in after him without being told, pressing my hands back against his side, because some instinct in me had already decided that letting go simply wasn’t an option I was willing to consider.
Damian took the seat across from us, phone already at his ear, voice low and rapid — coordinates, names, a doctor’s name repeated twice like an incantation, orders to a security team I would later learn was stationed two counties over, close enough to matter, far enough to have survived whatever had just happened at the estate.
“Drive,” he said to Felix, and the SUV lurched forward onto a service road so dark it seemed to swallow the headlights whole.
I watched the estate disappear behind us through the rain-streaked back window — watched the amber glow of it flicker, once, twice, and then bloom into something else. Orange. Moving. Alive in the worst way.
