Chapter 18 - The Fall of the House
Marcus Diaz stood on the iron catwalk, Julian’s old hunting rifle pressed firmly against his shoulder, smoke curling from the barrel.
The heavy brass chandelier suspended directly above Roman’s security team snapped from its primary counterweight cable, screaming down through thirty feet of empty air like a falling star.
The three-ton iron fixture shattered against the orchestra pit railing, exploding into a hail of brass rosettes, cut crystal, and pulverized concrete.
The concussive impact threw Roman’s men to the floor, their weapons clattering across the slick floorboards.
"Claire, get down!" Ethan lunged forward, tackling me behind the heavy oak drafting table as Roman’s rear enforcer opened fire toward the catwalk.
The high-caliber rounds chewed through the plaster walls, tearing down century-old cornices in clouds of white dust.
Ethan returned fire with three disciplined, terrifyingly precise shots.
The man near the aisle collapsed backward, clutching his shoulder as his weapon skidded into the flooded pit.
I reached into the steel footlocker, pulled out the cassette tapes and the red-bound ledgers, and shoved them deep into my canvas work pack.
"The freight exit through the alley!" I yelled at Ethan, grabbing his sleeve through the choking drywall smoke.
"Go with Marcus!" Ethan shouted back, reloading his pistol with a practiced flick of his wrist. "I'll hold the foyer!"
"I'm not leaving you behind to bleed out in my father’s theater!" I screamed, pulling him by the collar with a fury that surprised both of us. "You wanted to live in the light, Ethan? Then you run toward it, you coward!"
For a fraction of a second, something broke behind Ethan’s hardened exterior—the mask of the Carter heir peeled away, revealing the terrified, exhausted boy who had watched his family poison every good thing he had ever touched.
He grabbed my hand, his grip crushing and desperate, and we ran together through the backstage labyrinth as the secondary fire alarms shrieked their death song.
Behind us, Roman’s voice cut through the gunfire, raw, unhinged, stripped of all high-society grace:
May you like
"You don't leave Chicago alive, Claire! None of you do!"
We burst through the southern delivery dock into the blinding teeth of the blizzard, the freezing wind stinging our burned faces, our boots sinking into twelve inches of pristine white snow.
