Chapter 4 - The Diner Logic
The library door didn't just open; it exploded off its hinges.
Two men in black tactical gear burst through the smoke, their assault rifles raised. The first man didn't even see Bee moving through the shadows. She didn't move like a soldier; she moved like a woman who had spent twenty years dodging swinging kitchen doors while carrying forty pounds of hot ceramics.
She swung the iron poker with the full weight of her 280 pounds behind it.
The solid iron hit the first man’s rifle with a deafening crack, shattering his collarbone and sending him crashing into the wall like a broken doll. Before the second man could adjust his aim, Maxim fired twice through the dark. The man collapsed into the hallway.
"Move!" Maxim yelled, grabbing Bee’s arm.
They ran through the service corridors, avoiding the main grand staircase where the gunfire was heaviest. Leo fell behind, guarding their rear, his pistol barking steadily into the dark until the sound was swallowed by the distance.
They reached the garage beneath the estate, but the heavy steel garage doors were shut tight, their electrical tracks dead without the main power grid. Maxim’s armored SUV sat uselessly in the center of the concrete floor.
"We're trapped," Maxim muttered, blood dripping from a fresh graze on his temple. His breathing was ragged, his tailored shirt torn and covered in plaster dust. He leaned against the hood of the car, his strength fading as the reality of the ambush set in. "The Morettis... they bought everyone. My security, my lieutenants... everything is gone."
Bee walked over to a heavy yellow forklift parked near the maintenance bay. She looked at the manual ignition switch, then at the heavy steel chains securing the emergency generator on the back wall.
"Hey, Rosetti," Bee called out, her voice calm and steady. "Do you know why I love working the night shift?"
Maxim looked up, his face pale through the shadows. "What?"
"Because when the power goes out in a kitchen, the fancy chefs with their culinary degrees start crying about their soufflés," she said, climbing into the rusty metal seat of the forklift and pulling the manual choke. "But the short-order cooks? We just grab the propane match and keep flipping burgers in the dark."
She slammed her foot onto the starter. The old diesel engine roared to life with a cloud of black smoke.
Maxim watched in absolute disbelief as Adelaide Callahan—a woman the high society of Manhattan wouldn't even look at on the street—drove the heavy yellow machine straight toward the reinforced steel garage doors.
The massive steel forks hit the center seam of the doors with a grinding, screeching roar of tearing metal. The forklift groaned, its tires smoking against the concrete, but Bee didn't lift her foot. She pressed the hydraulic lever, lifting the forks with immense pressure until the steel doors buckled outward, tearing away from their tracks and crashing into the rainy driveway outside.
"Get in the car, Maxim!" she yelled over the engine's roar.
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Maxim didn't hesitate. He scrambled into the passenger seat of the armored SUV as Bee threw the forklift into reverse, jumped out of the seat before it even stopped moving, and climbed into the driver's side of the vehicle.
She slammed the SUV into drive, blowing through the ruined gates of the estate and disappearing into the cold, blinding New York rain before the remaining assassins could even clear the stairs.
