Chapter 19 - Fire Beneath the Cross
The holy sanctuary erupted into a warzone.
Three black tactical ropes dropped from the shattered high clerestory windows. Armed men in unmarked combat armor descended like demons from the vaulted shadows, their submachine guns barking instantly.
"GET DOWN!" Alexander roared, his reflexes superhuman.
He slammed Maria to the carpeted altar floor, throwing his entire body over hers as high-caliber rounds shredded the altar’s marble pulpit into dust. The sound inside the cathedral was deafening—the roar of automatic gunfire, the shattering of priceless stained glass, the screaming of guests as the Vance operatives in the pews drew their weapons and returned fire with lethal, coordinated discipline.
"Carter! Suppressive fire on the high rafters!" Alexander barked through his wrist-comm, drawing his twin modified handguns from under his tuxedo jacket.
Alexander rolled to a knee, his eyes locking onto a shooter sliding down the central rope. *Crack! Crack!* Alexander fired twice. The operative went limp, falling sixty feet to the marble floor with a sickening crash.
Maria didn't stay down. The Kevlar bodice of her gown deflected a shower of razor-sharp glass shards as she scrambled toward the altar steps. Beside her, Father Thomas had ducked behind the stone tabernacle, clutching his rosary.
"Father!" Maria yelled over the deafening cacophony of gunfire. "The vows! Do the vows!"
Father Thomas blinked in utter disbelief, his eyes wide behind his spectacles. "My child, we are under mortar attack!"
"I don't care!" Maria shouted, her eyes blazing with terrifying fury as she grabbed Alexander’s arm, pulling him down beside her behind the heavy marble pillar. "Alexander! If we don't finish the vows, the trust doesn't unlock! If the trust doesn't unlock, we don't have the legal authority to freeze their accounts! Marry me right now!"
Alexander looked at her through the smoke and drifting white dust. A wild, savage grin broke across his blood-stained face. He loved her. By God, he loved her more than life itself.
"Father!" Alexander barked, firing three rounds over the pillar to drop another advancing gunman. "Say the damn words!"
Father Thomas swallowed hard, gripped his cross, and shouted at the top of his lungs over the roar of gunfire: "Alexander Vance, do you take Maria Santos to be your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?"
"I DO!" Alexander roared, slamming a fresh magazine into his weapon and firing into the choir loft.
"Maria Santos, do you take Alexander Vance to be your lawfully wedded husband?" Father Thomas screamed as a burst of bullets pulverized the statue of St. Peter five feet above their heads.
"I DO!" Maria yelled back, her voice ringing clear through the chaos.
"By the power vested in me... I PRONOUNCE YOU HUSBAND AND WIFE! YOU MAY KISS THE BRIDE!"
Alexander grabbed Maria by the back of her neck, pulled her against his chest, and crashed his lips onto hers.
It was a kiss forged in gunpowder, blood, and defiance. A vow sealed not in whispered prayers, but in thunder. As their lips parted, Alexander slid the heirloom gold wedding band onto her finger alongside the diamond, locking the ancestral ring into place.
Across the globe, in a private data facility in Zurich, a digital prompt turned from amber to emerald green: *MARRIAGE CONFIRMED. SOFIA VORONIN TRUST UNLOCKED. ASSETS TRANSFERRED TO MARIA VANCE.*
"Carter!" Maria shouted into Alexander’s comms. "Execute the override! Drain the Voronin shell accounts NOW!"
"Executing, Mrs. Vance!" Carter’s voice screamed through the earpiece.
Down the center aisle of the cathedral, the heavy oak doors were blown off their hinges with a shaped C4 charge. The smoke parted.
Walking through the wreckage, surrounded by four heavily armed bodyguards, was Julian Sterling. Beside him stood a tall, terrifying woman in an emerald-green fur coat with a brutal scar slicing across her left cheekbone: Madame Katarina Voronin herself.
Katarina held a gold-plated desert eagle, her cold grey eyes sweeping over the carnage until they locked onto Maria.
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"Hello, little niece," Katarina purred, her voice carrying through the sudden lull in gunfire. "You have your mother's eyes. It will be an honor to close them forever."
***
