Chapter 11 - The Ambush in the Woods
"Down! Get down!" Clara screamed, throwing her entire body over Titan and pulling the massive dog off the raised patio onto the lower grass as a second suppressed round chipped the stone wall where her head had been a second earlier.
Titan didn't cower. The moment the gunfire sounded, the Cane Corso’s training and protective instincts overrode his healing ribs. He let out a ferocious, guttural roar—a sound that shook his entire chest—and scrambled to his paws, placing his massive body squarely between Clara and the pine trees, his hackles raised, his teeth bared in a terrifying snarl.
"Titan, no! Stay with me!" Clara desperately grabbed the thick fur of his neck, pulling him back against the base of the stone cottage patio to keep him out of the sniper's line of sight.
Up at the main house, the emergency perimeter alarms erupted—a deafening, wailing siren that echoed across the mountain valley.
From the dense brush at the edge of the woods, three men dressed in tactical hunting gear and dark masks emerged, rifles raised as they sprinted across the open lawn toward the cottage. They weren't standard hitmen; they were professional trackers hired by Richard Vance, utilizing the delivery van’s arrival to mask their approach through the outer forest sensors.
"Secure the girl! Shoot the dog if it moves!" the lead tracker shouted, lowering his rifle to aim directly at Titan’s broad chest as they closed the thirty-yard gap.
Before the tracker could pull the trigger, the glass terrace doors of the main house above them were violently kicked open.
Julian Rostova didn't wait for his tactical teams to deploy from the barracks. He bounded over the stone balustrade of the main terrace, dropping fifteen feet onto the lower lawn with a heavy roll, rising instantly to his feet with a high-caliber tactical assault rifle clamped to his shoulder.
He didn't issue a warning. He didn't ask for a surrender.
Julian opened fire while running at a dead sprint across the grass. His first three-round burst caught the lead tracker directly in the center of his tactical vest, the high-velocity armor-piercing rounds lifting the man off his feet and slamming him backward into the dirt before he could even aim at Titan.
"Contact! Left flank!" the second tracker screamed, swinging his rifle away from the cottage toward Julian.
Marcus and three estate guards poured around the side of the main stone house, laying down a devastating, synchronized wall of suppressive fire that chewed through the turf and bark of the surrounding pine trees, pinning the remaining two assassins behind a landscaping boulder.
Julian didn't dive for cover. He moved with a cold, terrifying, mechanical rage, advancing directly toward the boulder while reloading his rifle with fluid, lightning-fast precision.
"Julian! Get down!" Clara screamed from behind the patio wall, terrified that a stray bullet would catch him in the open.
Julian ignored her cries. He reached the flank of the landscaping boulder, kicked the third assassin’s rifle out of his hands as the man tried to reload, and drove the heavy steel butt of his weapon directly into the man's jaw with a sickening crack, rendering him instantly unconscious.
The final assassin—a lean man with a sniper rifle—dropped his weapon, raising his hands in terror as Julian’s rifle barrel pressed directly between his eyes.
"Don't shoot! I surrender! We were just hired for a snatch-and-grab!" the assassin gasped, trembling violently as Marcus and his guards encircled him with weapons drawn.
Julian’s breathing was heavy, his ice-blue eyes dilated with a pure, murderous adrenaline that made him look like an avenging god of war. He pressed the hot barrel an inch deeper into the man's forehead.
"Who gave the operational codes for my outer gate sensors?" Julian demanded, his voice dangerously quiet over the ringing silence of the lawn. "Vance doesn't have the technical reach to bypass my perimeter thermal scans. Who bought the gate?"
"It... it was an inside code!" the assassin stammered, raising his hands higher. "A woman! She gave our handler the maintenance rotation schedule and the gate override key yesterday afternoon! We met her at a downtown parking garage!"
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"What woman?" Julian snarled, pulling the hammer of his rifle back with a sharp metallic click.
"The blonde! The one from the real estate family!" the man cried out in panic. "Vanessa! Vanessa Vance gave us the codes! She said she wanted to watch the girl bleed out on the grass herself!"
