Chapter 7 - The Battle of the Kitchen
The estate’s industrial kitchen was pitch-black, lit only by the violent flashes of lightning outside the high stainless-steel windows and the red emergency exit signs.
Claire burst through the double swinging doors, her shoes slipping slightly on the polished tile floor.
In the center of the vast room stood heavy stainless-steel prep tables, massive commercial ovens, industrial walk-in refrigerators, and racks of heavy copper cookware hanging from ceiling beams.
"In the walk-in cooler!" Victor ordered, pointing toward the heavy insulated steel door at the back of the kitchen. "It's bulletproof, three inches of solid steel! You stay inside until Mr. Hale arrives!"
Before Claire could reach the cooler door, the double doors of the kitchen swung open with a bang.
Two Moretti mercenaries stepped into the room, their tactical flashlights sweeping across the stainless-steel counters.
"There they are!" one yelled, raising his submachine gun.
BANG! BANG!
Victor fired from behind a prep counter, dropping the first gunman. But the second gunman sprayed a barrage of bullets across the counter, shattering copper pots and puncturing steam lines.
Victor took a hit to his shoulder, grunting loudly as he tumbled backward against the dishwashing station, his gun sliding across the wet floor tiles into the darkness.
"VICTOR!" Claire gasped.
The remaining mercenary grinned under his night-vision goggles, stepping slowly past the prep table, sweeping his flashlights over the floor as he picked up Victor's fallen weapon.
"End of the line, lady," the gunman sneered, pointing his weapon toward the corner where Claire was hiding behind a bread rack. "Carmine said no survivors."
Claire’s eyes darted frantically around the prep table.
Beside her hand sat a fifty-pound commercial paper sack of unbleached bread flour, opened for the morning's baking, alongside a heavy iron French rolling pin.
As the gunman stepped within two feet of her table, Claire didn't scream or freeze.
She grabbed the heavy fifty-pound sack of flour with both hands, using every ounce of strength built over years of kneading dough, and hurled the open bag directly into the gunman’s face!
POOF!
A massive, blinding cloud of white flour exploded into the air, instantly coating the gunman’s night-vision goggles, blinding his eyes, and filling his lungs with dry powder!
"AGHH! MY EYES! I CAN'T SEE!" the mercenary choked out, coughing hysterically and firing two wild shots into the ceiling.
Claire picked up the five-pound iron rolling pin from the counter, swung it with all her body weight, and struck the gunman squarely across the side of his tactical helmet!
CLANG!
The gunman collapsed like a sack of bricks, dropping unconscious onto the tile floor.
Claire stood over him, breathing heavily, holding the rolling pin like a club, her emerald dress covered in white flour.
"Ms... Ms. Bennett..." Victor groaned from the dishwashing station, holding his bleeding shoulder with a faint, astonished smile. "Remind me... never to anger a baker..."
Before Claire could respond, the outer heavy wooden doors of the kitchen were blasted off their hinges by a high-explosive breaching charge!
BOOM!
Dust and fire filled the room.
Through the thick smoke stepped a massive figure in a black wool coat, holding an automatic shotgun, flanked by twenty heavily armed Hale syndicate soldiers wearing red armbands.
Dominic Hale stepped over the ruined door frame. His face was thunderous, his eyes sweeping the destroyed kitchen until they locked onto Claire standing in the flour cloud, holding Eli safely in her left arm and a rolling pin in her right.
Dominic dropped his shotgun onto a prep counter, sprinting across the slippery tile floor in three long strides.
He threw his large arms around both of them, pulling Claire and Eli into a tight, desperate embrace, burying his face in Claire’s flour-dusted hair.
"You're safe," Dominic breathed, his entire body trembling with an emotion his men had never seen in him. "Thank God... you're safe..."
May you like
Claire closed her eyes, letting the rolling pin fall from her hand, leaning her forehead against his shoulder as Eli let out a soft, sleepy coo against her chest.
"We held the kitchen, Dominic," Claire whispered, forcing a tearful smile through the dust. "We held the kitchen."
