Chapter 9
There was no time to think.
Ronan didn't look for cover. He didn't drop his head.
He threw his massive, armored body directly across Alistair, spreading his broad back like a blast door, shielding the nobleman from throat to knee.
*CLANG-CLANG-CLANG.*
The shrapnel tore into Ronan's back.
The impacts shredded the fine black wool of his tuxedo jacket, ripping through the tailored silk and punching straight into the Kevlar weave beneath. The kinetic energy was massive—enough to tear a man’s spinal column in half, enough to pulverize internal organs through bone.
Yet to Ronan, it felt like... a bucket of dry peas tossed against his back.
A pleasant, tingling heat washed across his shoulder blades, humming beneath his skin like a warm bath. He didn't even lose his balance. He didn't even grunt.
Beneath him, however, Alistair let out an awful, strangled wheeze.
The nobleman’s head whipped back against the marble base of the statue, his body arching violently as if a high-voltage current had been driven through his spine. His right hand clawed at Ronan’s shoulder, his fingers digging into the ripped fabric with desperate, agonizing strength.
"Alistair!" Ronan looked down, checking him frantically. "Did a piece bounce under? Did it catch you?"
"No..." Alistair choked out, his teeth bared in an agonizing snarl, his face slick with sudden, cold sweat. His chest was heaving in ragged, shallow gasps. "No... kill them... Ronan, they're... in the rafters..."
Ronan looked up.
His men from the docks were already engaging the syndicate ground team at the southern exits, the thunder of shotgun blasts echoing off the high ceilings. But above, in the darkened mezzanine, a solitary figure stood perched upon the narrow iron catwalk directly beneath the central skylight.
The assassin wasn't holding a submachine gun.
He held a customized, high-powered anti-material sniper rifle, equipped with an infrared scope and an integrated silencer.
A tiny, blood-red laser dot cut through the rising smoke of the rotunda.
It danced across the marble plinth. It slid over the shattered glass.
And then, it locked dead center onto Alistair’s chest.
The assassin had the angle. From forty feet up on the catwalk, the plinth offered no cover. The crosshairs were aligned directly over Alistair’s failing heart.
*Not while I'm breathing.*
Ronan didn't hesitate. He didn't calculate trajectory. He didn't consider the caliber.
He launched himself upright, putting his entire body into the path of the beam. He stood tall, planted his boots against the slick marble, and met the invisible barrel with a savage, triumphant grin.
*CRACK.*
The rifle discharged.
The supersonic round—a heavy, armor-piercing 7.62x51mm tungsten-core slug designed to punch through engine blocks—struck Ronan square in the center of his chest.
The impact was immense. The shockwave tore the front of his tuxedo open, disintegrating the silk shirt, shredding the ballistic vest into smoking ribbons of blackened Kevlar. The sheer kinetic force shoved Ronan back half a step, his boot heel scraping against the stone.
The impact felt like a heavy fist thumping against his breastbone.
A dull, harmless ache. A flash of prickling warmth beneath his ribs.
No blood. No puncture. No cracked bone.
Ronan looked down at the smoking hole in his ruined shirt, then looked up toward the catwalk. His teeth bared in a feral, unkillable sneer.
"Nice shot, sweetheart!" Ronan roared over the ringing gunfire. "My turn!"
In a single, fluid motion, Ronan drew his customized .357 revolver from under his arm.
He didn't need a scope. He didn't need infrared. He raised the heavy steel barrel, aligned the front sight with the muzzle flash above, and squeezed the trigger twice.
*BOOM. BOOM.*
The heavy magnum rounds punched straight through the iron railing of the catwalk. The sniper’s head snapped back, his rifle clattering over the ledge to shatter on the floor below, followed an instant later by the assassin’s limp body plummeting forty feet onto the broken marble.
Across the rotunda, the gunfire rapidly tapered off.
Miller and four burly dockworkers in tactical kit swept through the western corridor, their shotguns smoking, shouting commands as the remaining syndicate gunmen scattered into the rainy night.
"Perimeter secure!" Miller’s voice echoed through the vast, ruined hall. "Building’s locked down! Clear!"
Ronan lowered his smoking revolver, spinning the cylinder with an easy flick of his wrist before holstering it. Adrenaline roared through his veins like wildfire. He was alive. He was whole. He had absorbed a high-caliber sniper round to the chest, taken an explosive shrapnel blast to the back, and walked away without a single scratch.
He was the unkillable shield.
He turned around, his chest swelling with pride, ready to drop to one knee and flash that cocky, teasing grin that always made Alistair’s composure crack.
"Told you," Ronan called out, laughing breathlessly as he stepped toward the statue. "Told you they don't make lead heavy enough to—"
The words died in his throat.
Alistair was not sitting against the plinth.
He had collapsed entirely onto the marble floor, curled tightly on his right side amid the glittering sea of broken glass.
His body was shuddering with violent, rhythmic convulsions. Both of his hands—even his injured, bound left arm—were clutched frantically over the dead center of his chest, right over his heart, his fingers twisting into the dark velvet of his coat as if trying to rip his own sternum open.
"Alistair!"
Ronan dropped to his knees beside him, the shattered glass biting into his trousers, completely unheeded.
"Alistair, look at me! It's over! I got him!"
Ronan reached down, hooking his large hands under Alistair's shoulders to lift him up.
The moment his fingers touched Alistair's back, Ronan’s breath caught in his throat.
The dark velvet of Alistair's coat was warm. It was soaking wet.
Alistair gasped—a wet, rattling sound that ended in a sickening choke.
A gush of bright, frothy arterial blood spilled past Alistair's pale lips, splashing across his chin and pouring down the pristine white silk of his cravat. His gray eyes were blown wide, pupils dilated to the rim, staring at Ronan with an expression of unfathomable, desperate agony.
"Alistair! No, no, no—" Ronan's voice cracked into a frantic, hysterical shout. "Miller! Get the medical kit! Call the armored transport! Now!"
"Ronan..." Alistair choked, another wave of dark blood bubbling up from his throat, spilling over his teeth. His breathing was a horrific, liquid whistle—the sound of a collapsed lung filling with blood. "Ronan... please..."
"Where are you hit?!" Ronan’s hands were shaking violently as he searched Alistair’s body, his mind spiraling into blind, dizzying panic. "I intercepted the bullet! It hit *me*! The shrapnel hit *my* back! How are you bleeding?!"
There was no exit wound on Alistair's back. But the blood was pooling rapidly on the floor beneath them, hot and thick, steaming faintly against the cold marble.
"Infirmary," Ronan roared, scooping Alistair into his arms, lifting the nobleman’s trembling, blood-drenched body against his chest. "Clear the service exit! I'm taking him to the manor!"
***
The armored town car tore through the rainy midnight streets like a missile, its heavy engine screaming at maximum RPM as Ronan blew through every intersection toward the western bluffs.
In the back of the transport, Dr. Julian was kneeling on the floorboards, trying frantically to jam an oxygen mask over Alistair’s face, but Alistair kept coughing, spraying red against the clear plastic.
