Chapter 4 - The Fall of the Matriarch
The dust settled slowly,
coating everything in a layer of fine,
white powder.
Garrett pushed a heavy piece of the chandelier off his legs.
His head was bleeding,
and his vision was blurred,
but he was alive.
Coraline lay a few feet away,
pinned beneath a massive beam.
She wasn't moving.
He didn't check for a pulse.
He didn't have time.
He stumbled through the wreckage of his home,
searching for the bunker entrance.
The gunfire had died down,
replaced by the crackle of flames.
The Ashford soldiers were retreating,
realizing the house was a death trap.
He found the entrance to the underground level behind a fake bookcase.
He punched in the code,
his fingers trembling.
The heavy door hissed open.
Wesley was there,
his gun raised,
until he saw Garrett.
"Boss,
you're a mess,"
Wesley said,
lowering his weapon.
"Are they safe?"
Garrett asked,
his voice a rasping wheeze.
Wesley nodded toward the back of the room.
Mave was sitting on a cot,
clutching Posie,
who was surprisingly quiet.
When Mave saw Garrett,
she stood up and ran to him,
burying her face in his chest.
"I thought you were dead,"
she sobbed.
"Not yet,"
he said,
stroking her hair.
"But we can't stay here."
"The Ashfords will bring more men."
"And my mother...
where is my mother?"
"I'm right here,"
a voice came from the shadows of the bunker.
Eleanor Hail stepped into the light.
She had managed to find her way into the safety of the bunker during the chaos.
She looked remarkably composed,
aside from a small cut on her cheek.
"You've ruined us,
Garrett,"
she said,
her voice devoid of emotion.
"The Hail name is trash."
"Our assets are being seized by the federal government as we speak."
"The Ashfords made sure of that."
Garrett looked at her,
and he saw her for what she really was.
A parasite that lived off the glory of others.
"The name was trash the moment you used it to threaten a mother and her child,"
he said.
"I'm done with you,
Eleanor."
"Wesley,
give her a phone and a car."
"She has ten minutes to leave the state."
"If I ever see her face again,
I won't be her son."
"I'll be her executioner."
Eleanor opened her mouth to argue,
but the look in Garrett's eyes stopped her.
It was the look of a man who had already lost everything and realized he was finally free.
She turned and walked out of the bunker,
her heels clicking on the concrete floor,
the last sound of his old life fading away.
"What now?"
Mave asked,
looking at the small,
grey-eyed girl in her arms.
Garrett looked at his daughter.
She wasn't a princess of an empire.
She wasn't a pawn in a merger.
She was just a little girl who deserved a life without fear.
"I have a place in the mountains,"
Garrett said.
"No one knows about it."
"Not the Ashfords,
not the feds."
"We'll leave tonight."
"But the money,
the power..."
Mave started.
"It was never mine anyway,"
Garrett said.
"I was just guarding it for people who didn't care about me."
He reached down and picked up Posie.
She opened her eyes and looked at him.
"Are you my daddy?"
she asked,
her voice tiny and sweet.
Garrett felt a tear escape his eye,
mixing with the blood and the dust on his face.
"Yes,"
he whispered.
"I am."
"And I'm never going to let the rain touch you again."
They left the bunker,
moving through the smoke-filled ruins of the Hail estate.
Outside,
the morning sun was trying to break through the clouds.
The fire department was arriving,
the sirens wailing in the distance.
Garrett didn't look back at the burning mansion.
He didn't look at the luxury cars.
He walked toward a plain,
unmarked SUV parked in the trees.
He put his family inside.
May you like
And for the first time in his thirty years,
he drove himself.
