Chapter 5 - The Siege Prep
If Silas was desperate enough to beg, he was desperate enough to take it by force. The men he owed money to wouldn't just politely knock on the door. They would come in the dead of night, heavily armed, and completely devoid of morals.
I had forty-eight hours.
I drove to a surplus store outside the city limits, paying in cash. I bought high-tensile wire, heavy-duty deadbolts, motion-sensor cameras, blackout curtains, and a tactical trauma kit. When I returned to the brownstone, I went to work.
The Division taught us that a secure location is an illusion; you can't keep an enemy out indefinitely. What you can do is control how and where they enter, and make them pay in blood for every inch of ground they take.
I reinforced the front and back doors, leaving the basement cellar windows just vulnerable enough to look like a plausible point of entry. I killed the main breaker to the house, plunging the brownstone into absolute darkness. I knew the layout by heart; they would be stepping into a maze completely blind.
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Finally, I unlocked my personal footlocker—a heavy case I had shipped back from my last deployment in Eastern Europe. I pulled out my customized suppressed 9mm handgun, checked the action, and slid a combat knife into the sheath on my thigh.
I sat in the armchair in the grand parlor, entirely cloaked in the shadows, waiting for the wolves to arrive.
