Chapter 6 - The Siege of Brooklyn Heights
Back at the Brooklyn safehouse, the morning sun was streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating the sprawling living room where Ivy and Esme were practicing walking without their crutches, their coordination improving with every step.
Dante stood by the kitchen island, drinking a cup of black coffee while staring at a bank of security monitors that covered every angle of the brownstone.
Suddenly, the monitor for the rear alleyway flickered.
Three black unmarked SUVs turned down the dead-end street, their headlights extinguished, rolling silently over the pristine snow.
Dante didn't panic. He calmly set his coffee cup down, reached under the marble counter, and pulled out a heavy tactical shotgun, racking a shell into the chamber with a sharp, metallic clack.
“Girls,” Dante said, his voice completely level. “Pack the tablet and the titanium gear. We have company.”
Esme stopped walking, her heart leaping into her throat. “Who is it? Mom’s security?”
“Worse,” Dante replied, his eyes narrowing as he watched the monitor show men in black tactical gear stepping out of the SUVs, wearing unmarked ski masks and carrying suppressed assault rifles. “That’s the Calabrese clean-up crew from Chicago. Celeste just traded her corporate empire for a syndicate hit squad.”
Ivy grabbed the leather-bound journal and the micro SD card from the coffee table, slipping them into her backpack as Sal sprinted down the stairs from the second-floor armory carrying two submachine guns and a vest of extra magazines.
“Mr. Moretti, they’ve blown the front gate biometric lock!” Sal yelled, drawing his weapon. “They’re coming through the atrium!”
“Fall back to the reinforced panic room behind the library!” Dante ordered, firing a single blast through the living room window to shatter the glass and establish a firing line.
Bang!
Glass rained down onto the patio as automatic gunfire erupted from the front of the brownstone. Bullets tore through the mahogany front doors like paper, chewing up the interior walls and shattering porcelain vases into a million deadly fragments.
“Move, move, move!” Dante barked, grabbing Ivy by the shoulder and pushing both twins toward the dark, wood-paneled corridor leading to the library.
Esme ran alongside them, her titanium leg braces clicking rhythmically against the hardwood floor, refusing to let her body slow down. They weren't helpless victims anymore; they were Arthur Voss’s daughters, and they weren't going to die hiding in a corner.
Dante spun around, leaning against the doorframe of the library, and squeezed the trigger of his shotgun twice, sending heavy buckshot down the hallway and dropping two of the masked mercenaries in a heap of blood and ballistic gear.
“Sal, seal the security bulkhead!” Dante yelled.
Sal slammed the heavy steel emergency button on the wall. A massive, six-inch-thick steel vault door slid downward from the ceiling, slamming into the floor with a deafening, thunderous roar just as a hail of enemy rifle fire ricocheted off its exterior surface.
They were locked inside the panic room. Safe for the moment.
But as Dante turned around to check on the girls, his phone buzzed violently in his pocket. He pulled it out.
It wasn't a text message. It was a live video stream from a private security camera inside the Manhattan headquarters of Voss Bio-Tech.
On the small screen, Celeste Voss was standing at the podium in front of a hundred reporters and television cameras, looking calm, radiant, and utterly ruthless.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Celeste’s voice echoed from Dante’s phone speaker. “Before we discuss our quarterly earnings, I want to address the vicious, politically motivated smear campaign currently being waged against my company by organized crime figures—specifically, Dante Moretti. Furthermore, my two disabled daughters have been abducted from our family home by these exact criminals, and I am calling on federal law enforcement to rescue them before it’s too late.”
Ivy stared at the phone screen, her hands clenched into tight fists.
“She’s turning the narrative around,” Ivy whispered, fury burning in her veins. “She’s playing the victim while sending hit squads to murder us.”
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Dante looked down at the screen, then up at the two girls standing tall beside him. A slow, terrifying, brilliant smile spread across his scarred face.
“Let her have her press conference,” Dante said, sliding his phone back into his pocket. “Because right now, the dead-man’s switch is hitting the public servers. And by the time Celeste finishes her opening remarks, the whole world is going to know the truth about what happened to Arthur Voss.”
