Chapter 31
Izzy
The panic room was colder than the rest of the house.
The walls were thick, with a reinforced door and a bank of monitors embedded into one side like the room had been designed with the expectation that one day, something like this would happen.
Tone shut the door behind us and locked it with practiced speed.
Her fingers moved quickly across the keypad. There was no hesitation and no fumbling, and I could see that she had probably done this before, or trained for such a scenario.
Or at the very least, she had imagined it enough times to know exactly what to do.
“Sit.” She was already moving toward the camera panel.
I didn’t sit. My legs wouldn’t cooperate.
Gunfire echoed faintly through the walls, distant but constant now. Not random shots. Sustained. Intended to inflict maximum damage.
Tone powered on the camera system. One by one, the screens flickered to life. The first feed showed the front gate.
My stomach dropped. Men in black. Six of them still standing.
Others were already down on the gravel outside, bodies sprawled in unnatural positions near the perimeter where the guards had clearly engaged first. The ground looked chaotic—shell casings scattered, bullet impacts along the gate pillars, one security vehicle angled awkwardly like it had been forced into cover.
“They’re still pushing,” Tone whispered.
Her voice was tight. Focused. She leaned closer to the screen, counting under her breath.
“One… two… three… four… five… six.”
Another camera feed switched automatically to the driveway, where there was more movement.
More men were approaching the house itself. My hands started to shake.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
Tone didn’t respond.
She switched feeds again.
The foyer camera came into view.
Archie was there.
Standing in the shadows near the base of the stairs.
He was standing completely still, like a statue.
Leaning on his cane like he was waiting for a doctor’s appointment instead of an armed assault on a fortified estate.
He wasn’t pacing or shouting orders. He wasn’t even looking toward the door.
His head was lowered slightly, chin angled down, posture almost… contemplative. Like he was bowing his head, praying.
Tone leaned closer to the monitor, her eyes narrowing.
“How,” she uttered under her breath, “can the bastard be so calm?”
Another burst of gunfire sounded outside, sharper this time, closer.
We stayed fixed on the monitors, watching every movement with rigid focus.
Archie didn’t flinch.
Didn’t turn his head.
Didn’t so much as change his stance.
There was no visible reaction at all, as though the sound of bullets tearing through the grounds was nothing more than background noise he had already accounted for.
He just stood there in the dim foyer lighting, one hand resting loosely on the head of his cane, shoulders relaxed, waiting.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Tone hissed.
I didn’t have an answer. And I couldn’t look away.
On another screen, the front approach camera showed the men closing in on the house. They were fast, coordinated and armed.
One of them signaled to the others. Then—the front door exploded inward. Wood splintered violently as it crashed open, the sound echoing even through the insulated walls of the panic room.
Three men stormed into the foyer with guns raised. And for the first time, Archie moved. He lifted his head. And the man on the screen was no longer the same person who had been standing there seconds ago.
The stillness vanished. What replaced it was cold focus. His posture straightened. His shoulders squared. His gaze sharpened into something flat and lethal.
The three men slowed. They hadn’t expected him. There was a visible moment of hesitation as their eyes registered the cane. The posture. The lack of immediate aggression.
Confusion.
That split second cost them. Archie’s hand moved. Fast. Faster than anything I had seen from him before. The cane lifted and angled forward. And then—gunfire erupted from the cane itself.
A barrage of bullets tore through the foyer. The sound was sharp, rapid, precise.
The three men dropped almost instantly, their bodies hitting the marble floor in staggered succession like their strings had been cut.
My breath caught.
“What—” I choked.
Tone’s mouth fell open.
“Fuck,” she whispered in disbelief. I’d never heard her curse as much as she had in the space of the past few minutes.
Archie lowered himself to one knee with ease, his composure unchanged. He reached down near his feet and retrieved something with efficient precision.
The camera angle tilted slightly as another wave of attackers entered the foyer.
There were more footsteps and more movement. Before they could fully advance, Archie’s arm flicked forward.
Knives. Actual knives.
They flew with frightening accuracy, embedding into two men before they could even raise their weapons properly. One clutched his throat. Another collapsed mid-step.
A third tried to pivot, but he was too slow. Archie had already drawn a handgun. The shots were precise. Clean. Focussed.
He fired into the fallen men as they attempted to recover, eliminating movement before it could become a threat. There was no hesitation and no wasted motion. Just calculated follow-through.
I stared at the screen, frozen.
Outside the panic room, chaos was unfolding.
Inside, we watched it happen in silence.
Tone leaned forward so sharply her knuckles turned white against the console.
“He’s not limping,” she remarked.
I blinked. She was right.
He surged forward across the foyer with complete balance, no drag in his step, no visible weakness in his gait. The cane was no longer a support. It was a weapon. An extension of him.
Another man lunged from the side corridor.
Archie pivoted smoothly and closed the distance in seconds, grabbing the attacker’s collar and driving a single bullet into his head at point-blank range.
The man dropped instantly.
Archie didn’t celebrate. He scanned the foyer once, methodically, confirming every body, every angle, every potential movement. Until he was satisfied that was the last of them.
Then he straightened fully. And only then did he resume the limp.
Tone made a strangled noise somewhere between a gasp and a shriek.
“Dumb fucker forgot to limp!” she screeched, slapping a hand over her mouth a second later like she couldn’t believe she’d verbalized her observations.
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t process what was happening.
The harmless man who had arrived at the door with a cane and polite greetings was gone, no longer harmless. In his place stood someone precise, ruthless, and terrifyingly efficient. And for the first time since the gunfire started, a new fear settled in my chest. Not just of the men outside.
But of how much danger Raze had clearly anticipated if this was the man he trusted to stand between us and the rest of the world.