Chapter 14 - The Girl Who Didn't Run
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The deafening bang of the stun grenade in the enclosed hospital service corridor blinded Camila’s two bodyguards before they could even swing their rifles toward the stairwell door.
Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!
Julian moved through the drifting white smoke like the grim reaper himself. Four rounds took the two heavily armed mercenaries straight above their tactical vests, dropping them both to the linoleum before their fingers could find their triggers.
Blinded and coughing, Camila stumbled backward, dragging Nora with her by the collar of her blouse and jamming the nickel-plated Beretta hard against Nora’s ribs as Dario burst through the opposite hallway doors, cutting off her escape.
"Stop right there, Julian!" Camila shrieked, her polished mask shattering into raw hysteria as she pressed her back against the service wall, using Nora as a shield. "Take one more step and I put two bullets through her lungs!"
Julian stopped ten feet away.
The smoke cleared around him. His charcoal coat was dusted with white powder from the flashbang, his left shoulder bandage faintly stained crimson from the exertion, and both black pistols remained pointed steady as stone at the space between Camila’s eyes.
"Let her go, Camila," Julian said. His voice wasn't angry; it was the quiet, bottomless cold of Lake Michigan in January. "Your men downstairs in the East Atrium are already dead. Your father’s private jet at Midway was impounded by the FAA ten minutes ago. You have nowhere left to run."
"I have her!" Camila laughed wildly, blood trickling from her ear where the concussion grenade had ruptured her eardrum. She jammed the barrel harder into Nora’s side. "You never cared if I lived or died, did you, Julian? Even before the car bomb! You looked right through me for twelve months like I was glass! Why her?! She cleans toilets for minimum wage!"
"Because she never once lied to my face," Julian said softly.
Nora felt Camila’s finger tighten convulsively on the trigger against her ribs. Camila knew she wasn't walking out of this hospital alive—and out of pure, spiteful vanity, she was going to take Nora down with her just to ruin Julian forever.
Nora didn't wait for Julian to save her.
She had spent two years lifting hundred-pound laundry hampers and scrubbing marble staircases until her hands were calloused. Dropping her weight slightly, Nora drove her left elbow backward with every ounce of her strength straight into Camila’s solar plexus while grabbing the barrel of the nickel Beretta with both hands and wrenching it downward toward the floor.
BANG!
The bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the baseboard tile, grazing the hem of Nora’s jeans as Camila doubled over with a choked gasp for air.
Nora twisted the gun out of Camila’s manicured hand and shoved the blonde socialite forward onto her knees in the center of the hallway.
In three strides, Julian was there. He kicked the fallen Beretta away, planted his hand on the back of Camila’s neck to force her face down onto the cold linoleum while Dario snapped steel cuffs around her wrists, and then turned immediately to haul Nora against his chest.
His arms locked around her like steel bands, one hand cradling the back of her head where her cheek was bleeding from Camila’s pistol whip.
"You're insane," Julian breathed roughly against her temple, his heart hammering hard enough that she could feel it through his Kevlar vest. "You grabbed a loaded gun out of her hand."
"You were right there," Nora whispered into the warm wool of his collar, her legs finally turning to water now that the danger was over. "And Leo is safe in the basement bunker. I put him on the elevator before she got through the door."
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Julian pulled back just enough to frame her bruised face in both hands, looking at the split skin on her cheekbone with a dark, terrifying promise in his gray eyes as he glanced down at the cuffed woman on the floor.
"Dario," Julian ordered coldly without taking his eyes off Nora. "Take Camila to the Calumet shipyard warehouse. Tell her father he has until midnight to fly to Chicago and trade his own neck for hers—or he can listen to her pay for Matteo over the phone."
