Chapter 7 - Flight Toward the Red Light
“Where?” Claire asked, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. She looked around at the burning tables, the shattered mirrors, and the stampeding crowds blocking the main foyer. “The front doors are jammed! They’re crushing each other!”
Dominic nodded toward the eastern wall of the ballroom, forty feet from the stage riser.
Tucked into an alcove behind a decorative display of white marble urns and heavy crimson velvet drapes was an illuminated exit sign, casting a dull, ruby glow over a pair of heavy commercial emergency doors. The push-bar was reinforced steel, leading directly into a secure exterior alleyway that emptied onto 48th Street.
“The eastern fire exit,” Dominic said, his grip tightening on his Kimber .45. “It bypasses the lobby. My driver has an armored Suburban idling at the curb. We go out that door, we get inside the vehicle, and nobody touches you. Do you hear me? Nobody.”
Claire looked into his pale gray eyes. For seven years, she had convinced herself that Dominic Hale was a monster with no soul. But looking at the blood dripping from his arm, looking at the broad chest that had just absorbed wooden shrapnel meant for her children, she knew that whatever sins he had committed, he would die on this floor before he let a bullet touch Ethan, Ava, or Lily.
She took a deep, shuddering breath, her regal composure locking back into place.
“Girls,” Claire whispered, her voice remarkably steady as she cupped Ava and Lily’s flushed faces. “Listen to Mommy. We are going to play our running game. You hold Mommy’s hands, you keep your heads down, and you do not let go. No matter what sounds you hear. Do you understand?”
Ava sniffled, nodding bravely, wiping her tears against her ivory sleeve. Lily tucked her chin against her chest, her little vertical crease deepening between her brows as she took Claire’s left hand in a vise-like grip. Ethan immediately stepped to Claire’s right side, taking Ava’s hand, forming an unbreakable chain of children.
“On my mark,” Dominic murmured, his body coiling like an iron spring.
Across the room, Carter and Jackson laid down a heavy, sustained volley of fire, three rapid gunshots shattering the woodwork around the service entrance, forcing the shooter to duck back into the kitchen corridor.
“Mark! Go!” Dominic roared.
Claire surged to her feet, lifting her navy silk skirts with one hand while holding Lily and Ava with the other. She moved with desperate, graceful speed, her low heels clicking against the carpet as she navigated the perimeter of the stage, guiding the three children along the shadow of the velvet drapes.
Dominic did not run beside them. He moved backward, step for step, his massive frame shielding their exposed flank. His weapon was raised, his pale gray eyes tracking every shadow, every doorway, every overturned table.
As they crossed the open space between the stage and the urn alcove, Ethan stumbled slightly on a discarded silver champagne bucket.
The boy caught his balance on the rim of an overturned table, but instead of looking down, Ethan snapped his head back toward Dominic.
The amber light from the burning tablecloths struck Ethan’s face in full profile.
His pale gray eyes—cold, luminous, and encircled by that unmistakable silver ring—locked onto Dominic’s gaze with absolute, unyielding clarity. In that suspended microsecond, Dominic saw it all: the exact curve of his own jaw, the stubborn line of his own brow, the fearless blood of the Hale dynasty looking back at him from the frame of a six-year-old child.
A breath tore from Dominic’s lungs, so sharp and heavy it nearly halted his stride.
He didn't just suspect anymore. He didn't just deduce.
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They were his.
The knowledge did not enter his mind as a thought; it detonated in his soul like a thermonuclear strike. Every beat of his heart, every breath in his lungs, every drop of blood in his veins belonged to the three children running before him. And God help whatever creature stood between them and the daylight.
