Chapter 6 - When Wolves Come Knocking
Marin dropped to her knees beside the counter, pulling Delphine into a fierce, trembling embrace. Delphine buried her face in Marin's shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Marin... who are these people?" Delphine wept, clutching her sister's coat. "They came in smashing everything... they said you stole something that belonged to the mafia..."
"Shh, you're safe. You're safe now," Marin whispered, stroking her sister's hair while her own heart beat violently against her ribs.
Gabriel stood by the broken window, watching the street. The gunfire had gone largely unnoticed in the industrial district where early morning trains rattled the tracks, but time was evaporating rapidly. He glanced at his pocket watch again.
"They have vehicles circling the perimeter," Gabriel said calmly, bandaging his bleeding shoulder with a fresh linen towel from the prep rack. "Marcus’s personal security will be here in less than ten minutes. We cannot stay here."
"Where do we go?" Marin asked, helping Delphine to her feet. "If your family controls the police, the docks, and the city council, there's nowhere in this state we can hide."
"We don't hide," Gabriel replied, turning around. He tossed the canvas duffel bag onto the prep counter and unzipped it, revealing stacks of banded bills totaling at least two hundred thousand dollars. "Take this. There is a ferry leaving the south slip for Canada at seven-fifteen. Get Delphine across the border."
Marin stared at the mountain of cash, then up at Gabriel's gaunt, blood-drained face. "And what about you?"
"I have a board meeting to attend at three o'clock," Gabriel said, a dark, terrible smile touching his lips. "Marcus thinks he's inheriting an empire today. I intend to deliver his inheritance personally."
"You're going to get yourself killed," Marin said, her voice dropping into a desperate whisper. "You have an open gunshot wound, systemic inflammation, and you're bleeding through your third bandage. You won't make it up the steps of Ashworth Tower."
"Then I will die on the steps," Gabriel said simply. "Better to die on my feet than let that snake wear my father's ring."
Marin looked down at the money, then at Delphine, and finally back at Gabriel. For two years, she had run from the world, hiding behind delivery routes, accepting pennies, letting the powerful trample her name and her dignity because she felt powerless against their machine.
She remembered the letter that had stripped her paramedic credentials—bearing the embossed gold seal of the Ashworth Foundation.
"No," Marin said, her voice suddenly ringing with absolute clarity and authority.
Gabriel paused, frowning down at her. "No?"
"Delphine is going to take the ferry to our aunt's cabin in Maine," Marin declared, pulling five stacks of cash from the bag and stuffing them into Delphine's coat pockets. "She’ll be safe there. But I’m not running anymore. You need someone to keep your heart beating until three o'clock, Gabriel. And I have some unfinished business with Marcus Ashworth."
Gabriel looked at her for a long, silent moment. For the first time, a flicker of genuine respect—and something much deeper—warmed his cold gray eyes.
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"You're completely out of your mind, Miss Doyle," he said quietly.
"You're the one who survived a shallow grave," she fired back, strapping her father's gun into the waistband of her jeans. "Let's go steal a car."
