Chapter 8 - THE RECKONING AT THE CLIFF’S EDGE
The snow crunched heavily behind me, each footstep drawing closer through the dense, shadowed pine trees of the Montauk cliffside.
I pushed the stroller with frantic, desperate strength, slipping on the icy ground as the wind howled around us like a pack of wolves. My lungs burned with every breath of freezing air, but I couldn't stop. If they caught us, everything my mother died trying to protect—everything Victor was bleeding for back in Manhattan—would be wiped out.
Suddenly, a massive, dark figure stepped out from behind a snow-covered pine tree, blocking the narrow trail ahead.
I slammed the stroller to a halt, my heart dropping into my stomach.
It wasn't a mercenary in tactical gear. It was Arthur, my former supervisor, holding a heavy-caliber pistol with a steady, cruel grin plastered across his face.
"End of the line, Hannah," Arthur sneered, stepping closer, his breath pluming in the freezing air. "Mr. Vance sends his regards. He said to make sure the locket is intact before we drop you both over the cliff."
I instinctively stepped in front of Lily’s stroller, my hands trembling. "You're a monster," I whispered. "You knew my baby was sick, and you used her just to set a trap?"
"Business is business, sweetheart," Arthur laughed, raising the barrel of the pistol directly toward my chest. "Now hand over the necklace. Make it easy on yourself."
I looked down at Lily. Her eyes were closed, her tiny chest barely moving. The fight inside me—forged from years of poverty, exhaustion, and silent suffering—suddenly exploded into a fierce, blinding rage.
"I'll see you in hell first," I snarled.
Before Arthur could pull the trigger, a deafening crack echoed through the pine trees.
Arthur’s eyes went wide with shock. A spray of crimson bloomed across the shoulder of his heavy winter coat, and his pistol flew from his limp fingers as he spun around and collapsed hard into the snow.
Lowering a smoking sniper rifle from the upper ridge of the cliff, stepping out from the shadows of the snow-laden branches, was Dante.
"Move!" Dante shouted, sprinting down the rocky slope toward us. "More mercenaries are right behind me! We have to get to the extraction point!"
I didn't wait. I grabbed the stroller, following Dante as he led us down a steep, hidden switchback trail that dropped down toward a secluded rocky cove below the cliff.
As we broke through the tree line onto the frozen beach, the roar of a helicopter’s rotor blades thundered overhead. A heavy, matte-black transport chopper hovered just feet above the freezing surf, its landing lights cutting through the blizzard.
The side door slid open, revealing a familiar, imposing figure standing in the cabin doorway.
Victor Moretti.
His suit was torn and stained with blood, a white bandage wrapped tightly around his left shoulder, but his dark eyes burned with an indomitable, terrifying fire.
He reached down, extending his large, scarred hand toward me as Dante helped me heave the stroller onto the rolling deck of the chopper.
"Grab my hand, Hannah," Victor shouted over the deafening roar of the turbine engines.
May you like
I took his hand, and with a single, massive pull, he hauled me and my sick baby safely inside just as a hail of automatic gunfire from the cliff above chewed into the water and sand below us.
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