Chapter 13
The firefight in the courtyard was brutal and overwhelmingly one-sided. Orson stepped out from behind the stone pillar, pushing the heavy mahogany doors open. He walked out onto the grand stone steps of his estate, completely unbothered by the chaos unfolding around him. The flashing tactical strobes illuminated his handsome, angular face, carved into a mask of pure, sociopathic detachment.
He raised his weapon, firing in short, controlled bursts, systematically neutralizing any hostile who attempted to return fire. His movements were fluid, terrifyingly precise, and entirely devoid of fear.
"Push them into the center!" Orson commanded, his deep voice carrying over the din of the gunfire.
The Bellori forces tightened the noose, driving the few surviving Moretti soldiers out from behind the vans and into the open. The sheer, deeply masculine power that Orson projected broke the remaining morale of the strike team. They dropped their weapons, falling to their knees on the bloody gravel, raising their hands in sheer, unadulterated terror.
The gunfire ceased abruptly, leaving a ringing, heavy silence in the courtyard. The acrid smell of gunpowder and blood hung thick in the air.
Orson walked slowly down the stone steps. His polished leather shoes crunched over the gravel as he approached the kneeling survivors. He stopped in front of the strike leader, who was bleeding from a superficial graze on his shoulder, shaking violently.
"You brought a strike team to my home," Orson stated softly, his voice dropping into a lethal, freezing register.
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"We were following orders, Bellori!" the strike leader gasped, looking up with wide, terrified eyes. "Don Moretti told us the perimeter would be down! He said Tamsin gave the all-clear!"
"Tamsin is dead," Orson replied smoothly, entirely unaffected by the man's panic. "And so is the illusion that the Moretti family can survive this night."
