9. Reese
Reese
Static screams from the radio speaker.
The harsh, metallic screech slices through the cabin, obliterating the charged stillness between us. My grip tightens on the steel of the Glock in my hand.
A voice cuts through the crackling interference. It is unencrypted, arrogant, and thick with a brutal Chicago accent.
"We see the smoke from your chimney, Costa. The wolves left us a nice blood trail right to your front door. You're dead."
The transmission clicks off. The dead air that follows presses down harder than the blizzard raging against the timber walls.
Santi's expression turns rigid. The vulnerable, agonizingly raw man who just offered me the world vanishes in a fraction of a second.
A lethal glacier takes his place. His gaze snaps toward the reinforced wooden door.
His hair catches the dim, flickering light from the open stove.
He is assessing. He is mapping every threat between us and the door.
My previous life involved pre-flight checklists, weather charts, and polite dismissals of arrogant men. My new life involves the wrecked helicopter, a wolf pack, and a mafia hit squad stalking my perimeter. My Yelp review for this particular charter flight is going to be incredibly hostile.
Santi moves. He crosses the room with silent, terrifying speed. He grabs the oak table sitting in the center of the cabin and shoves it against the front door. The wood groans in protest. He drops the iron crossbar, then shoves the oak table hard against the door for good measure.
"Get away from the window," he orders. His voice is low and dangerous. There is no panic in him. There is only a terrifying focus.
I drop to a crouch, moving away from the frosted glass. I press my back against the solid timber wall near the iron woodstove. The rough wood bites through my jacket. The wind howls outside, tearing at the roof shingles, driving needles of cold through every gap in the timber.
Santi crosses the room to his bag. He pulls out two spare magazines, his movements fluid and precise. He slides one into his pocket and slaps the other onto the dusty desk next to the useless radio.
Someone leaked our location.
The realization hits me with the force of a freight train.
The voice on the radio, the encrypted military chatter from his brother Dominic earlier,the Bellanti file he chartered my helicopter to investigate.
The puzzle pieces snap together in my mind.
Santi’s family might control the North Side of Chicago, but the Bellantis have enough reach to bring their war to this frozen mountain.
"How many?" I ask. My voice is steady. I refuse to shake. I have survived a catastrophic helicopter failure and a trek through waist-deep snow. I will not cower for a group of men who need guns to feel powerful.
Santi checks the chamber of his primary weapon. "A scout team. The main extraction force is grounded until the storm breaks. These men moved ahead of the storm. Three, maybe four."
He looks at me. The stillness of his posture is unnerving. He is staring at the Glock in my hands.
Just two minutes ago, he stood in front of that door and gave me a choice.
He told me I could walk away. He told me he would get me off this mountain and let me go back to my empty, quiet life.
Or, I could stay. I could stand beside him in a war I did not start.
He promised to burn his city to ashes to keep me safe.
He offered me the most terrifying thing in the world: absolute devotion.
I have known what dead silence feels like since I lost my father.
I built a fortress out of independence. I learned to fly helicopters because the sky does not ask for emotional vulnerability. I kept my distance. I needed no one.
Then this man boarded my helicopter. He smelled like cold wind, old paper, and gunmetal.
He watched me wrestle a dying aircraft out of the sky without making a single sound.
He bled for me. He stood guard over me in a freezing bark shelter.
He claimed my body with a desperate reverence that dismantled every wall I ever built.
Now, the choice is here.
I look down at the heavy black weapon in my hands. It is loaded with hollow-point rounds. It is an instrument of death, handed to me by a man who lives in a world of violence.
"Cover the back door," Santi says. He points to the timber exit near the makeshift kitchen. "If the handle turns, you put three rounds directly into the center of the wood. You do not hesitate. You do not ask questions. You shoot."
I check the Glock the way my father taught me. Ready. The metallic clack is deafening in the small room.
"I won't hesitate," I say.
Santi pauses. He turns his head. The flames behind the open door of the iron woodstove illuminate the sharp, aristocratic lines of his jaw. His beard frames a mouth that has kissed me senseless. His dark eyes catalog my posture, my grip on the weapon, the stubborn tilt of my chin.
He nods once. A dark approval radiates from him.
Heavy boots crunch in the snow outside.
The sound is muffled by the screaming wind, but it is unmistakable. They are circling the cabin. They are probing the perimeter, looking for a weak point.
Aviation fuel, cold wind, gunmetal, and old paper crowd the room.
"Costa!" the voice yells from the front porch. It is barely audible over the howling gale. "Send the pilot out! We only want you! We'll let her walk down the mountain!"
A cold, bitter laugh escapes my throat.
"They clearly haven't checked the weather report," I mutter under my breath. "Or looked at my boots."
Santi does not smile, but the corner of his eye tightens. He presses himself flat against the wall beside the front window. He raises his weapon, aiming it at the wooden door.
"Do not engage them verbally," Santi says. His voice is low. "They want us to reveal our positions inside the room."
I nod. I sink lower into my crouch and shuffle backward until I have a clear, unobstructed view of the rear door. I raise the Glock with both hands. The metal is freezing against my palms. I line up the sights as my father taught me at the range when I was sixteen. Center mass.
Wood splinters with a deafening crack.
Gunfire erupts. Automatic weapons tear into the front of the cabin. Bullets chew through the log walls, sending chunks of pine and lethal splinters flying across the room.
The front window shatters. A tidal wave of sub-zero wind and blinding snow blasts into the cabin, scattering ash from the stove and plunging the room into chaos. The room plunges into darkness, illuminated only by the frantic, strobe-light flashes of muzzle fire from outside.
I hit the floor. The wooden planks are painfully icy against my stomach. I keep my weapon trained on the back door.
Santi returns fire.
His shots are not frantic. They are not sprayed wildly into the dark. He fires three times.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
A thud echoes from the front porch. A man screams, a wet, gurgling sound that is instantly swallowed by the wind.
Santi reloads in the dark. He does not speak.
The automatic fire from the tree line intensifies. They are suppressing the front of the cabin, pouring lead through the shattered window to keep Santi pinned down.
My eyes dart to the back door. The iron handle is rattling.
Someone is trying to flank us.
Blood thunders in my ears. The survival instinct that kept me alive during the helicopter crash flares to life. I do not panic. I do not freeze. I align the glowing green sights of the Glock directly with the center of the wooden door.
The lock gives way with a metallic snap. The door kicks inward, swinging open on groaning hinges. A figure dressed in white winter camouflage fills the doorframe, an assault rifle raised to his shoulder.
I pull the trigger.
The recoil bites fiercely into the web of my hand. The deafening roar of the gunshot in the enclosed space rings in my skull.
I pull it again. And again.
Three rounds. Just like Santi ordered.
The hollow-point rounds catch the man center mass, punching him backward. He collapses backward into the snowbank, his weapon clattering uselessly onto the wooden porch.
The back half of the cabin goes quiet.
The bitter scent of cordite fills my nose, thick and choking. My hands are steady. I stare at the empty doorway, the swirling snow blowing over the dead man's boots.
I just killed a man.
The thought should paralyze me. It should send me into shock. Instead, a strange, terrifying calm washes over my brain. He was going to kill Santi. He was going to kill me. I simply removed the threat. I am surviving.
"Reese."
Santi's voice slices through the darkness. He is moving toward me, staying low beneath the window line. The front of the cabin is quiet. The suppressive fire has stopped.
"I'm clear," I say. My voice sounds normal. It surprises me. "Back door is secure."
Santi reaches me. He does not ask if I am okay. He grabs my shoulders, his hands gripping me with a bruising, desperate strength. He hauls me to my feet and shoves me backward against the solid timber wall beside the open doorway.
It is the same urgent press he used in the bark shelter before he claimed my mouth. His body corners mine against the rough pine, his shoulders blocking any view of me from the broken doorway.
His chest heaves. His eyes are wild. He scans my face, my neck, my torso, looking for blood that does not belong to the men outside.
"You're uninjured," he breathes. It is not a question. It is a demand for the universe to comply.
"I'm fine," I tell him. I look up into his face. The cold wind blowing through the broken doors swirls around us, but I do not feel the chill. The heat radiating off his body burns through my frozen skin.
"There was a third man," Santi says, his voice low and rough. "I caught him moving through the trees on the west side. They are down. That was all of them."