Chapter 40 Secured #2
Dodging another strike coming from my left, I grabbed the raised arm, twisted my body and hurled the fucker over my shoulder and into the torso of the last approaching gunman.
Both men went down, their backs hitting the floor hard just as I drew my Berretta and fired a shot into each of their throats.
Moving between their mangled bodies, Camaro barked one hell of a snarl as she stood over Jaden, her teeth bared in warning.
Rage ripped through me like lightning when I noticed she was wearing one of her protective vests that were also stored alongside Jaden’s.
If she had time to armor her dog, then she had time to get her ass to one of the many panic rooms hidden throughout the house.
“Discedant,” I ordered, Camaro relaxing her stance and immediately backing out of the way.
Pocketing my pistol at my lower back, I crouched down to find Jaden staring blankly up at me, her amber eyes wet with fear as her hands clutched the wall she was clearly trapped under.
Pressing my hands under the debris, I heaved it up, shoving it away with a crashing thud, dust swarming into the air.
Jaden tried to pull herself up, but I beat her to it by grabbing the shoulder strap of her protective vest and yanking her to me.
She practically dangled on her toes as I took stock of her appearance, noticing all the magazines of different calibers strapped to her vest, accompanied by three knives, two Glocks, and a single grenade.
She was also soaking wet, donning bits of dust and drywall in her damp hair while her skin was marred with even more scratches and bruises than before.
An ungodly amount of fury rushed through me at Jaden’s blatant disregard for my orders, clearly choosing to engage rather than run like I had literally just told her to merely two days ago.
When my eyes locked with hers, her chest shuddered as her glossy gaze filled with dread. I wanted to instantly strangle her all over again. And she knew it.
“You’ve disobeyed me for the last time,” I growled.
Hauling her in the direction of the nearest panic room, I whistled for Camaro to follow as more gunfire echoed in the background. My urgency to get Jaden under ground intensified as it drew closer.
“Darren, wait!” she pleaded as she tried to regain her footing while I practically dragged her across the floor. “I was trying to find one! But the house was blown to shit! There were gunmen everywhere! I wasn’t going to look for a panic room unarmed!”
My blood boiled hotter and hotter with every lie she spoke in her defense, unwilling to entertain a single word from her until I had her safely bunkered down.
The fact that I couldn’t kill Clive and Owen a second time with my own hands pissed me off even more. If they had handled the attack in Chicago better, they would still be alive to be here to protect Jaden from her own stupidity.
Fuckers were lucky they were already dead.
Movement at the far end of the hall caught my attention.
Gripping Jaden’s vest, I shoved her through the nearest open doorway as I trained my pistol in the direction of the gunfire aimed at us.
I gritted my teeth as a bullet grazed my arm before two of my own entered the skulls of the gunmen ahead of us, dropping them both to the ground.
Turning back into the room, I found Jaden trying to pick herself up from the floor, grumbling under her breath. Yanking her back up to stand, I didn’t wait for her to regain her balance as I continued to drag her down the hallway.
“Darren, wait!” she continued to protest as she uselessly pulled against my grip.
Ignoring her pleas, I practically threw her against the wall of what was left of the library. I reached down to remove the rug, concealing the hidden lever of the trapdoor underneath. Lifting the lid, I clocked my wife with a murderous glare and pointed at the descending stairway. “In. Now.”
“No, Darren, wait, wait! I don’t want to go down there! Please!”
I cocked a brow at her sudden refusal.
Did she seriously just tell me no?
“I can’t be down there! I need to be outside! Please! I don’t want to be left in this house by myself! It’s on fire!” she screeched, panic rising in her voice as she started to back away.
My eyes narrowed at the oddly misplaced apprehension she was still wearing on her scraped-up face, and it made the well-controlled rage still simmering inside become absolutely volcanic.
I don’t have time for this shit.
In two steps, I marched forward and backhanded her so hard across the face she fell into the barely intact bookcase. Camaro whined as Jaden’s knees buckled, her motor skills dazed from the impact as she failed to regain her bearings.
With her diminished capacity, I easily threw her over my shoulder without a fight and moved back for the hidden stairs, whistling again for Camaro to go in ahead of us.
Her claws clicked along the metal stairs as I followed her in, closing the door over top of us and locking it in place. The bottom of the stairs yielded an open space wide enough to fit a twin bed, a fridge, a sink, and a tiny connected bathroom.
Jaden groaned and squirmed as I laid her down on the bed to disarm her body of every weapon she had collected from her kills.
Each item I found brought me closer and closer to throttling her knowing she had engaged this many people.
But I didn’t have time to punish her now.
It would have to wait until this was over.
Despite her groaned protests, I gathered Jaden’s little stash and locked it all away in a large drawer.
I then moved to retrieve my most reliable fail-safe, the only thing I could count on to keep Jaden obedient.
When I turned back around, she was clutching the side of her face as she pushed herself up against the wall.
“Darren, please don’t leave me down here,” she begged as I moved toward her. When her eyes landed on what was in my hand, more panic jolted her body. “Please! No! Take me outside! I don’t want to be trapped in here!”
Ignoring her nonsensical protest, I reached out and clutched her arm, hauling her to me as I removed the cap of the syringe with my teeth.
“No, Darren wait, wait!” she begged as she tried to maneuver away from me, pressing her hand against my wrist to stop me.
Camaro continued to whine loudly as I angrily whipped Jaden around onto her stomach, pressing my knee into her back to hold her down.
“Darren, no! Wait! Stop!” she cried as I pushed the needle into the back of her arm, injecting her with the sleeper agent calibrated just for her.
“Stop…” she mumbled before her eyes fell shut and her body finally went limp. Rolling her onto her back, I removed her vest and did a quick scan of her body, searching for obvious injuries. Relief was swift when all I found were scrapes, bruises, a few burns, and a shit ton of drywall dust.
Moving my gaze back to her face, I could see her reddened cheek was already starting to swell. She’d have one hell of a bruise and a massive headache when she woke up, but at least she’d be alive.
Rising to my feet, I grabbed a small ice pack from the freezer, wrapped it in medical gauze from a first-aid kit and placed it under her cheek. The swelling should be significantly reduced by the time I returned.
But the fact that I had to resort to such extreme measures was an infuriating mystery I’d have to dwell on at a later time. Right now, I needed to get back up there and handle whatever the fuck had decided to knock on my door.
And I needed to be able to do that without worrying about my disobedient brat of a wife. Knocking her ass out and hiding her in a safe place was the only option I had since I couldn’t trust her to follow my orders. I’d enjoy rectifying that later.
“Stay, Camaro,” I told the dog, approving as she hopped up onto the bed and laid her head over Jaden’s torso with a sad whine. “Good girl.”
Turning to the monitors of the security cameras installed into the wall, I searched for my would-be enemy.
Two black vans idled before the front entrance, the chrome gate lying in pieces on the ground.
Two of my men were lying dead or severely injured at their posts in front of the house.
Six cameras from the east wing of the house were destroyed, but I spotted Scott moving through the halls, giving orders to my remaining guards.
With the two vans and the chopper, and what I could find on-screen, I estimated about twenty gunmen had descended into my home. And that was a deadly fucking mistake.
Pulling out several hidden drawers, I switched out my Kevlar plates with fresh ones and then slung an AK-12 over my shoulder.
After strapping on two additional Glocks, two grenades, three knives, and several more magazines, I was sufficiently armed.
I checked the cameras one last time to ensure no one was outside the trapdoor and quietly made my way back up the stairs.
Almost immediately, there was more gunfire in the background, and the sound drew my attention to the southern entrance.
Maneuvering quickly through my destroyed house, the sounds of fighting increased as I got closer.
Rounding the corner, I found Scott and two of my guards fighting off three more gunmen.
From my hidden vantage point, I was able to shoot a round into each of their legs.
Shifting quickly, I slammed the butt of my rifle into the head of one while Scott and my guards did the same with the others.
We would need some to survive for questioning later on.
And I planned on having their night last for a very long time.
“You find her?” Scott asked as he knelt to hogtie their hands and feet.
“She’s secure in bunker three. How many have you taken out?”
“Including these three? Six.”
“There shouldn’t be very many left then. There are two vans parked outside.”
“I saw,” he confirmed with a nod.
“Try to keep as many alive as you can. I want at least five to gut later on.”
“I’ll do what I can, but I don’t think there are many left,” he replied with a bloody smirk on his face.
“I’ll head east and meet you at the front exit.”
“Have fun,” he jested before I turned away and headed farther into the house.
Rage filled the void in my chest at the state of my fucking house. It was completely destroyed, which meant Jaden couldn’t stay here any longer than completely necessary. Once I wrapped things up here, I’d have to move her to a nearby safehouse.
I managed to tag three more remaining gunmen, killing only one and clipping the limbs of the others with enough bullets to keep them from lifting a single toe. My guards had killed the rest that had scattered out along the rest of the property.
With the grounds finally secured, I ordered my men to clean up the bodies and to start working on damage control. With my medic team on their way, the only thing left to do was to drag some answers out of some soon-to-be very sorry assholes.
The corners of my mouth lifted as I made my way back through the house. Scott was going to need some assistance in stringing a bunch of dead motherfuckers up.