Page 92 of Fallen Heir
There were too many.
I couldn’t see them all at once, but I felt them circling like wolves. Hidden behind doors. Crouched in cars. Eyes watching, fingers itching on triggers. I had no way of warning Ben about the warzone they were walking into. No way to stop it. I had drawn the fire and now I was just… still.
Still breathing. Still standing. Still in front of the van.
Bruce kept me locked against him like a shield, his confidence thick in the way he breathed. He thought he had already won. That I’d already lost the moment I led them here.
The rage radiating off his body pulsed like a furnace, but it wasn’t anger alone—it was desperation. His grip tightened around my neck with each passing second, his breathing more ragged than composed.
“Keep your eyes open, Savannah. This’ll be a sight you don’t want to miss.” His voice dripped with confidence, slick and composed—but his hand told the truth. A subtle tremble ran through it, betraying the fear he was trying so hard to hide.
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t focused on him anymore.
A glint caught my eye—barely a shimmer, a flash of something metallic in the upper corner of the lot. Not high enough for a sniper, but not low enough to ignore. Not part of Bruce’s crew. I knew the way his men moved. This wasn’t them.
It was someone else.
Someone who had come in quiet. Stealth first, guns second.
Someone like Jaxson.
My pulse roared. Not with fear—but with adrenaline. Adrenaline and the wild hope that someone had seen the setup. That someone was already flanking the flanks.
I scanned the tree line, eyes searching for any glimpse of help, any shimmer that might give someone away. Ben had let me see him—that much I knew now. It hadn’t been a mistake. Hewantedme to know he was there. A signal. A promise.
But I needed more than a promise.
I needed a miracle.
Another glint caught the edge of my vision. A flicker of light dancing off something metallic, barely distinguishable from the shadows layered deep within the woods. It disappeared just as quickly. I couldn’t see anyone—no faces, no figures—just the echo of presence. The kind you feel deep in your chest, like the storm that settles before it breaks.
I kept searching. Straining. But the tree line refused to reveal its secrets. I couldn’t tell where the darkness ended and the people hiding within it began. But I knew they were there. Ifeltthem.
This was the calm before the storm.
And then, like lightning cleaving the sky in two, it started.
A shimmer at the base of a tree. A flash. No sound, no warning—just a glint of precision.
I turned my head a fraction, tracking the direction.
Blood.
A man standing too far into the open dropped his hands to his sides, his body folding to the ground in a heap. A clean shot to the head. Blood exploded on impact, splattering the side of the shipping container in a spray of crimson and white fragments. Fragments of a skull. He didn’t twitch. Didn’t scream. Just collapsed—lifeless, limp, and final.
Chaos erupted.
Another man dropped. Then another.
One by one, Bruce’s men were gunned down with merciless precision. Headshots. All of them. Fast, quiet, final. Screams filled the clearing—sharp, short-lived cries that ended just as abruptly as they began. Some men collapsed without a sound at all.
The silence that had hung in the air fractured into violence.
Gunfire cracked like thunder. Men shouted in confusion. Some tried to run. Others spun in circles, searching for enemies they couldn’t see.
My eyes were wide, heart hammering against my ribs as blood sprayed the dirt beside me. The smell was instant—iron and smoke. One man’s body dropped so close to me, I felt the heat of it.
The children whimpered behind me, their small hands trembling where they clung to my shirt, to each other. I turned back as best I could.
