Draven's Point Of View
The air hung thick with the scent of unspent gunpowder and pure, unadulterated terror… metallic and sharp on the back of my tongue. The nine men left standing looked like they were trying to merge with the masonry of the Silvestro mansion, their backs pressed against sun-warmed stone as if it might swallow them whole and spare them what was coming.
They gripped their weapons like lifelines, white-knuckled hands clutching cold steel in frantic desperation, but they weren't stupid. Fear had a way of sharpening the mind, even when it paralyzed the body. A strange clarity came with knowing you might die, every sense heightened, every detail crystalline.
They understood that if one stray finger twitched against a trigger, this courtyard would transform into a graveyard before the first shell casing hit the gravel.
