Chapter 13 - The iron queen
Gunfire rained down on the reinforced glass like a hailstorm of lead, creating spiderweb cracks along the armored windows. The driver groaned as a high-caliber round pierced the engine block, filling the vehicle with choking white smoke. Arthur covered his head in panic, but Clara did not cower. Her months of surviving humiliation at the hands of the city's cruelest had forged steel inside her spine.
"Stay down, Clara!" Roman commanded, drawing a customized matte-black pistol from beneath his coat. His men in the trailing vehicle leaped out, returning fire, and the overpass turned into an active war zone.
"Roman, the fuel line is ruptured!" Clara pointed through the smoke toward the dashboard warning lights blinking red. "If we stay inside this car, we burn!"
Roman locked eyes with her, seeing neither tears nor helpless terror in her gaze—only fierce, uncompromising determination. A grim smirk touched his lips. "Follow my lead. Three seconds."
Roman kicked the driver's side door open with tremendous force, using the heavy slab of armored metal as a mobile barricade. He fired three rapid, deafening shots, dropping two approaching gunmen with terrifying precision. Clara seized Arthur’s coat, hauling her father out of the passenger seat and into the rainy dark, keeping low behind Roman’s broad silhouette.
Bullets pinged against the asphalt near Clara’s boots. One attacker swung around the flank, aiming a shotgun straight at Roman's exposed blind spot. Without hesitating, Clara snatched a heavy steel tire iron lying discarded on the roadside from a blown tire. With all the force in her body, she swung it into the side of the gunman’s knee, shattering the joint.
The man screamed, collapsing onto the wet pavement, and Roman finished the threat without looking, his arm wrapping around Clara’s waist to pull her clear of the burning wreckage.
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"Reinforcements are twenty seconds out," Roman growled into his earpiece, his chest heaving as the remaining ambushers retreated into the darkness, leaving five bodies behind.
Clara wiped blood and rain from her forehead, her silver gown ruined once again, torn and soaked in grime. But her gaze burned like a diamond. "Let them run. They came for me, Roman. But they don't know who I am anymore."
