The Blood Wedding
1409 Words
Chapter 3
The Blood Wedding
The roar of the helicopter over the cabin was so intense that it made the reinforced windowpanes vibrate. Esperanza felt the sound pounding directly against her chest—a physical reminder that their time had run out. She was trapped between two walls of fire: behind her, the town that had sold her; above her, an enemy Silas feared more than death itself.
Silas remained standing by sheer force of will. His face was pale, almost translucent under the cabin’s LED lights, but his hands moved with terrifying precision as he prepared a piece of equipment on the steel table.
"We can’t stay here!" Esperanza screamed to be heard over the din. "They’re coming down! They’re going to break in!"
"Not if they believe I’m not the man they’re looking for," Silas replied. He turned toward her, and the intensity of his gray gaze forced her to take a step back. "Come closer, Esperanza. Now."
She obeyed, her legs feeling like jelly. The heat emanating from Silas’s open wound cut through the cold air of the room. He took her hand. His fingers were long, calloused, and stained with his own blood, but his grip was firm—almost possessive.
"In this briefcase, there is an encrypted satellite connection to a Department of Justice server. If we register this marriage link now, my protection status will automatically extend to you. You become 'property' of the State, under direct federal custody. Neither Richard nor those men in the helicopter can touch you without starting a diplomatic incident they can’t afford."
Esperanza swallowed hard. Her eyes filled with tears that refused to fall.
"Marrying a stranger in a cabin while we're being hunted? This is madness, Silas. I don’t even know who you really are."
"I’m the man who is going to keep you alive," he said, leaning in so close she could see the flecks of silver in his eyes. "But you have to understand something: this isn't a piece of paper you can tear up tomorrow. For the system to validate this as real in the middle of a flight, it has to be unquestionable. My last name will be yours. My past will be yours. And my enemies... they will be yours, too."
Silas activated a thermal camera on the wall. On the screen, human silhouettes were visible, rappelling down ropes from the helicopter about two hundred yards from the cabin. They were ghosts of heat moving with tactical speed.
"Place your hand on the scanner," Silas ordered.
Esperanza placed her palm on a cold glass surface. She felt a small prick at her fingertip; the system was taking a DNA sample for immediate biometric validation. Silas did the same.
"What are you doing?" she whispered, her heart hammering at a thousand miles per hour.
"Signing our union sentence."
Lines of code began to race across the screen at a dizzying speed. "Malva, Esperanza" and "Thorne, Silas" appeared in white letters against an official blue background. But the process wasn't instantaneous. A loading bar crawled forward: 15%... 22%...
"They’re at the perimeter!" Esperanza cried, watching the thermal shadows surround the structure.
Silas cursed and, with a quick movement, grabbed a weapon resting on the table. The pain from his wound made him stagger, and Esperanza instinctively caught him by the waist to keep him from falling.
For a moment, time stopped. She felt the hardness of his abdomen, the erratic beat of his heart against her palm, and the fragility hidden behind that warrior facade. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and for the first time, there was something more than calculation in his gaze. There was a dark, bitter gratitude.
"If we don't make it out of this..." she started.
"We will. No one dies on their wedding day," he replied with a crooked smile that didn't reach his eyes.
A deafening blast shook the cabin. A flashbang had exploded on the porch.
Blinding white light filtered through the cracks, and the sound left Esperanza with a high-pitched ringing in her ears. She sank to the floor, covering her head with her hands, but Silas remained standing, using the table as cover, aiming toward the reinforced door.
"Behind the kitchen island! Now!" he barked.
Esperanza crawled across the cold floor, feeling panic suffocate her. She had never felt fear like this. The fear of Miller Richard back in town was a constant shadow, but this was live fire. This was the end of the world.
The cabin door took its first hit. A hydraulic ram. The wood groaned, but the steel frame held.
"30 seconds for validation!" Silas shouted, glancing at the screen while exchanging short, precise shots through the ventilation slits.
Each detonation of Silas’s weapon inside the small cabin felt like a hammer blow to Esperanza’s skull. The smell of burnt gunpowder was acrid and choking. She saw the wound in Silas’s side bleeding heavily again, soaking the bandage she had applied. He was losing too much blood, yet he kept firing—a man turned into a war machine to protect a woman he barely knew.
"Almost there!" she yelled, watching the progress bar from her hiding spot: 85%... 90%...
Suddenly, a voice amplified by a megaphone boomed from outside, cutting through the roar of the rain and the gunfire.
"Agent Thorne! Hand over the girl and the hard drive, and we’ll give you a quick death. You know there’s no way out. Virginia is ours!"
Esperanza looked at Silas. "Hand over the girl?" Her own father wasn't the only one using her as a bargaining chip. But Silas didn't look at her. His eyes were fixed on the door.
"I’m not leaving without my wife!" Silas roared, his voice making the very air vibrate.
At that moment, the screen emitted a sharp, harmonious beep—a ridiculously peaceful sound amidst the chaos.
REGISTRATION COMPLETE. CITIZENS: SILAS AND ESPERANZA THORNE. STATUS: LEVEL 5 PROTECTION ACTIVATED.
"It’s done!" Esperanza exclaimed.
Silas let out a heavy sigh and lowered his weapon for a second. Quickly, he pressed a red button on the console.
"This activates the 'Scorched Earth' protocol. In ten seconds, a maximum priority distress signal will reach the nearest airbase. If they don't retreat, there will be a m******e right here."
Silas crawled toward Esperanza and sat on the floor beside her, leaning his back against the kitchen cabinets. He was drenched in sweat and blood, but he took her hand. This time, it was Esperanza who squeezed back hard.
"Welcome to the family, Esperanza Thorne," he whispered, his voice barely audible. "I’m sorry our honeymoon is in hell."
The cabin door finally gave way with a burst of splinters. Shadows dressed in black and armed to the teeth stormed in, their weapon lights sweeping the room. Esperanza closed her eyes and pressed herself against Silas’s chest, waiting for the end.
But Silas didn't move. With the hand that wasn't holding Esperanza’s, he held up a small detonator.
"One more step... and we all turn to dust," Silas warned with a blood-chilling calmness.
The men stopped. The tension in the room was so thick it could be cut with a knife.
Esperanza opened her eyes and saw the intruders: faceless men, mercenaries with military gear. But what hurt the most was seeing Miller Richard stepping in behind them, a smug grin on his face that vanished the moment he saw the device in Silas’s hand.
"Do you think you can steal what’s mine, stranger?" Richard said, his voice dripping with venom.
"She’s not yours anymore, Richard," Silas said, raising Esperanza’s hand to show the biometric scanner that still glowed green.
"She’s a Thorne now. And if you touch a single hair on her head, the government of this country will fall on you with all its weight."
Richard roared with rage and raised his own weapon, but at that moment, a rumble even greater than the helicopter's shook the mountain. A fighter jet roared past at low altitude, breaking the sound barrier, followed by the sound of sirens approaching from the valley.
The game had changed.
- Writer
