Chapter 6 - The River of Flames
I hurled Vincent against the stone wall of the sunroom with enough force to knock the breath from his lungs. He collapsed onto the tiled floor, gasping like a landed fish, clutching his throat as two of Luca’s men burst through the doors, their weapons drawn.
"Bind him," I ordered them, not looking back. "Chain him to the radiator. If he makes a sound, shatter his kneecap. I'll deal with him when I return."
I sprinted down the long marble corridor, down the service stairs, and burst through the rear courtyard into the morning mist. Luca was already waiting at the wheel of a black armored SUV, the tires churning the white gravel as I dove into the passenger seat.
"Did the team report in?" I yelled over the roar of the supercharged engine as the SUV lurched forward, barreling down the private forest road toward the riverbank.
"The cottage is engulfed, Boss!" Luca shouted, gripping the steering wheel as the vehicle drifted dangerously around an unpaved hairpin turn through the thick pines. "The perimeter team engaged Marco and two mercenaries at the entrance. Our guys took them down, but Marco managed to ignite the fuel tanks in the basement before he dropped!"
Through the dense trees, a thick, greasy plume of black smoke billowed into the morning sky, blotting out the sunrise. The scent of burning pine and gasoline hit my nostrils before we even broke through the tree line.
We screeched to a halt at the edge of the riverbank. The old stone keeper’s cottage—a structure built into the side of the rocky limestone cliff above the boathouse—was wrapped in roaring orange flames. Timber rafters cracked like rifle shots in the intense heat. Thick black smoke poured from the subterranean vents along the river wall.
Three of our men were spraying chemical extinguishers into the main doorway, but the heat was unbearable, pushing them back toward the water.
"Clara!" I roared, throwing off my suit jacket and grabbing a heavy wool blanket from the trunk of the SUV.
"Damian, wait!" Luca grabbed my arm, his face blackened with soot. "The ceiling is collapsing! The main staircase is already gone! You can't go through the front!"
"The water pipe!" I yelled, pulling free from his grip. "Mia said she crawled through the drainage pipe under the weeping willow!"
I plunged down the muddy embankment, sliding down the wet limestone rocks until my boots hit the freezing current of the Delaware River. Overhanging branches of an ancient weeping willow trailed in the dark water. Pushing the green fronds aside, I saw it: a rusted, circular iron drainage pipe, three feet in diameter, jutting out from beneath the stone foundations of the burning cottage.
The pipe was slick with mud, but there were tiny footprints visible along the rim—Mia’s footprints.
I soaked the wool blanket in the icy river water, wrapped it around my head and shoulders, and crawled into the black, suffocating mouth of the pipe.
The heat inside the pipe was immediate and oppressive, radiating through the iron casing from the fire above. Smoke stung my eyes, blinding me as I pulled myself forward on my elbows and knees, my lungs screaming for clean air.
"Clara!" I shouted into the darkness, my voice echoing hollowly through the pipe. "Clara, hold on!"
After thirty agonizing yards of crawling through mud and stagnant water, the pipe opened into a low-ceilinged stone cellar. Flames were licking through the wooden floorboards above, dropping showers of burning cinders into the damp room.
And there, chained to an iron ring in the center of the flooded stone floor, her face blackened with soot and her clothes in tatters, was a woman.
She looked up through the smoke, her hazel eyes widening in sheer disbelief as she saw me emerge from the pipe.
"Damian?" she choked out, her voice cracked and raw.
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It was Clara.
Older, scarred by two decades of isolation, but unmistakably my twin sister.
