Chapter 16 - Catfight in the Dark
The hotel’s industrial kitchen was dimly lit, smelling of copper, frying oil, and stale dishwater.
Helena Vance was frantically trying to unlock the heavy rear alley exit when the sound of bare feet hitting wet tile made her spin around. She saw Clara standing ten feet away, breathing heavily, holding the heavy brass candelabra like a weapon.
"You really are a brainless maid," Helena spat, dropping the silver briefcase and reaching into her crimson evening gown to draw a pearl-handled snub-nosed revolver. "Did you think you could face me without Gabriel shielding your pathetic little life?"
Helena leveled the gun directly at Clara’s forehead.
Clara didn’t flinch. Her gaze drifted slightly to the right, toward the industrial dishwashing station beside Helena. The high-pressure scalding water hose was still humming on standby.
"You spent your whole life having men fight your battles, Helena," Clara said, her voice chillingly quiet. "You sit in penthouses and order poison for little children because you're terrified of getting dirt on your hands."
"I am royalty!" Helena screamed, her finger tightening on the trigger. "And you are nothing!"
Just as Helena’s finger pulled back the hammer, Clara lunged forward, throwing the heavy brass candelabra with all her strength directly at Helena’s hand.
The brass crashed violently against Helena’s wrist. The revolver discharged, the bullet ricocheting harmlessly off the stainless-steel hood overhead, before spinning across the slippery floor into the grease trap.
Helena shrieked in pain, but her mafia upbringing took over. She lunged at Clara with clawed hands, tackling Clara onto the wet industrial tiles.
They rolled across the floor in a flurry of torn silk and bruised limbs. Helena grabbed a handful of Clara’s blonde hair, slamming her head against the side of an aluminum prep counter. "Die, you filthy peasant!"
Pain exploded behind Clara’s eyes. For a fraction of a second, the phantom agony of Derek Lawson’s boot crashing into her ribs paralyzed her body. She could smell the familiar copper scent of her own blood.
*No,* Clara screamed internally. *Never again.*
Channeling every ounce of rage and survival instinct she had built over years of surviving hell, Clara brought her knee up violently into Helena’s stomach. Helena gasped, losing her grip. Clara rolled on top of her, pinning Helena’s arms against the tile with her knees, and delivered a brutal, closed-fist right hook directly across Helena’s aristocratic jaw.
Helena’s head snapped sideways, blood splattering from her split lip onto her ruined crimson dress.
Clara stood up, panting, wiping blood from her own eyebrow. She grabbed the high-pressure industrial hose, turned the valve, and pinned Helena to the floor beneath a roaring blast of scalding water, completely neutralizing her.
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Just then, the kitchen doors burst open. Gabriel stood in the doorway, his gun smoking, his tuxedo coat torn. Behind him lay a trail of fallen Vance soldiers.
He froze, taking in the scene: the defeated mafia heiress sobbing on the wet floor, and Clara standing over her like an untouchable warrior.
