Chapter 6 - Siege of the West Wing
THWIP! THWIP!
Two silenced rounds bit into the mahogany doorframe an inch from my ear, throwing splinters into the air.
I ducked low, rolling across the floor of the balcony, firing three return shots toward the top of the stairs. Celeste let out a sharp cry as one of my bullets struck the stone bannister near her leg, showering her with concrete dust. She scrambled backward into the darkness of the guest wing.
Downstairs, muzzle flashes illuminated the foyer as Vincent and his security team engaged the intruders.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
"Moretti! Get to the panic room!" Vincent’s voice bellowed through the gunfire below. "They breached the rear terrace gates! There's at least six of them!"
I didn't head for the panic room. Grace and Lily were inside, safe behind eight inches of reinforced ballistic steel. My job was to ensure no one made it down to the wine cellar corridor to break the lock codes.
I moved silently through the dark master bedroom, using forty years of knowing every inch of my house to my advantage. I slipped through the hidden service door behind my wardrobe—a secret passage my father had built during the height of the mob wars in the nineteen-seventies.
I emerged in the upper service hallway, right behind one of the flashlight beams advancing down the corridor.
The mercenary was dressed in full black tactical gear, his rifle raised, sweeping the doors. He didn't hear me until my arm wrapped around his throat in a tight, crushing rear-naked choke.
He thrashing wildly, trying to raise his rifle, but I drove my heel into the back of his knee, forcing him to his joints before twisting his head violently to the side. He went limp, collapsing onto the floorboards.
I snatched his tactical radio and his flashlight, pressing the button on the radio.
A raspy voice came through the speaker: "Celeste! Is Moretti dead?"
I held the radio close to my mouth, my voice thick with lethal promise. "Celeste is bleeding in the guest wing. And you have five minutes to leave my house before I hunt down every single one of you."
Static hissed over the line. Then a new voice took over—cold, aristocratic, and instantly recognizable despite twenty years of silence.
"Hello, Adrian," Julian Vance’s voice purred through the radio speaker. "I see you've finally met my daughter's full potential. But look out your front window, dear boy."
I froze. I stepped to the narrow arched window overlooking the front portico.
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Through the torrential rain and flashing lightning, I saw a black armored van parked directly outside the panic room's outer reinforced wall. Two men were setting a heavy, military-grade thermite explosive device against the concrete foundation.
They weren't trying to open the panic room. They were going to blow the structural foundation out from underneath it, burying Grace and Lily beneath eighty tons of collapsing stone.
