Chapter 8 - THE WEIGHT OF A FATHER
The grenade fell in slow motion.
A small, ribbed steel egg tumbling end-over-end through the dusty beams of the construction lights, straight toward the concrete floor where Adrian lay.
It hit the ground with a sharp, metallic clink and rolled exactly three feet from Adrian’s chest.
Five seconds.
Adrian couldn’t run. He couldn’t even roll away fast enough to escape the blast radius.
“Daddy!” Lily screamed from the doorway, dropping her wires and trying to run toward him. Silas caught her around the waist, hauling her backward into the rain, shielding her small body with his massive frame.
Four seconds.
Adrian looked at the grenade. Then he looked at Marcus, who was bleeding out behind the pillar, too weak to move.
Adrian didn’t think about his empire. He didn’t think about his revenge against his father. He thought about Claire’s laugh in the car, and Sophie asking for two cherries on her ice cream.
He had lost them because he couldn’t protect them.
He wasn’t going to lose anyone else today.
Three seconds.
With a guttural roar of absolute, agonizing effort, Adrian shoved himself up on his hands, lunging forward like a coiled snake.
He grabbed the heavy, Kevlar-lined tactical vest off the dead mercenary who had fallen from the catwalk moments earlier.
Two seconds.
Adrian threw himself entirely over the grenade, dragging the heavy Kevlar vest over his chest and tucking his head down, pressing his body flush against the cold concrete.
One second.
The world erupted into white fire and deafening thunder.
The concussive wave hit Adrian like a freight train. The Kevlar vest absorbed the shrapnel, but the sheer kinetic force of the blast lifted his entire body off the ground and slammed him violently backward against the rusted steel pillar.
His head struck the metal with a sickening crack.
The lights went out.
Dust and smoke billowed through the warehouse, thick and choking. The smell of cordite and burned concrete hung heavy in the air.
For a long time, there was only the sound of the rain.
Then, a small, ragged cough.
Lily wriggled out of Silas’s grip and ran into the smoke-filled warehouse. She tripped over debris, scraping her knees, her small hands feeling blindly in the dark.
“Daddy?” she whimpered, tears cutting clean tracks through the soot on her face. “Daddy, please wake up.”
She found him slumped against the base of the pillar. He was covered in gray dust, his coat shredded, blood trickling from a cut above his eyebrow. He wasn’t moving.
Lily dropped to her knees beside him. She pressed her small hands against his chest. She couldn’t feel him breathing.
“You promised,” she sobbed, burying her face in his ruined shirt. “You said nobody would hurt me anymore. You have to wake up. I don’t want to be an orphan again.”
A shadow moved in the smoke above them.
Uncle Paulie stepped out of the haze, holding a backup pistol. His expensive suit was covered in dust, and a cut on his cheek bled sluggishly, but he had survived the blast shielded by the catwalk.
He looked down at Adrian’s motionless body and sneered.
“Pathetic to the end,” Paulie spat, raising his gun toward Adrian’s head. “I’ll tell your father you died crying over a bastard.”
Lily looked up at the gun, her green eyes wide with terror, but she didn’t run. She spread her small arms out, shielding Adrian’s body as best as a three-year-old could.
Paulie laughed, pulling the hammer back. “Cute.”
A hand shot out from the dust like a striking viper.
It wasn’t Adrian.
It was Marcus.
Bleeding, shattered, and operating on sheer adrenaline and rage, Marcus lunged from behind the pillar and grabbed Paulie’s ankle, yanking the older man’s leg out from under him.
Paulie shouted in surprise, his gun firing harmlessly into the ceiling as he crashed hard onto his back.
Before Paulie could recover, Adrian’s eyes snapped open.
He hadn’t been dead. The blast had knocked the wind out of him, but the shockwave slamming him against the pillar had done something else.
It had violently, brutally realigned the compressed vertebrae in his lower back.
A surge of white-hot, agonizing, beautiful pain ripped through Adrian’s legs.
Adrian grabbed the silver Colt he had dropped during the blast. He didn’t have any bullets, but the gun weighed three pounds of solid steel.
With a roar that sounded more animal than human, Adrian drove himself up onto his knees. He raised the heavy revolver high above his head and brought the steel butt down directly onto Paulie’s temple with devastating force.
Paulie’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he went entirely limp.
Adrian dropped the gun, his chest heaving, gasping for air.
He looked down at his legs. He tentatively flexed his right foot.
The toe of his boot moved.
He flexed his left knee. It bent.
Tears, hot and fast, spilled down Adrian’s soot-covered face. He reached out and pulled Lily into his arms, crushing her against his chest, burying his face in her messy curls.
“I’m awake, little bird,” he sobbed, rocking her back and forth. “I’m right here. I’m right here.”
Silas emerged from the smoke, holding a flashlight and looking at the carnage in awe. Sirens began to wail in the distance, growing louder by the second. Someone had heard the explosion.
Marcus lay on the floor, watching Adrian hold Lily. A weak, painful smile touched his lips.
“You saved her,” Marcus whispered.
Adrian looked over at the man who had caused him so much pain, but who had just risked his last breath to save Adrian’s life.
“We both did,” Adrian said quietly.
May you like
The police lights flashed blue and red through the shattered warehouse windows, washing over them as the sirens reached the pier.
Adrian didn’t run. He just held his daughter tighter.
