Chapter 5 - The Wolf at the Window
Dante took the pillow from Sophie's hands as if he were holding unexploded ordnance.
Theresa stepped closer, her breath catching in her throat. Dante reached into his pocket, retrieved a small, pearl-handled pocketknife, and gently slit the blue nylon stitching along the star's edge.
He didn't pull out cotton stuffing.
From the center of the plush toy, Dante extracted a small, heavy rectangular cylinder made of titanium, no larger than a lipstick tube. It had a biometric thumbprint scanner embedded on one side and a hardened USB-C interface on the other.
"The master ledger," Dante breathed, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "Michael didn't hide the data. He hid the physical cold-storage drive. Enzo doesn't have the encryption codes. Without this drive, every offshore account, every safe-deposit box, every property holding Enzo tried to seize three years ago is completely frozen."
"Which means Enzo is broke," Theresa whispered, a grim, triumphant realization washing over her face. "He’s been running his entire operation on credit and borrowed muscle. He needs this drive to survive."
Suddenly, the lights flickered.
Once. Twice.
Then the heavy brass chandeliers went dark.
The low hum of the estate’s industrial generators never kicked in. The silence that followed was absolute, heavy, and terrifying.
Bruno shot to his feet, a guttural, terrifying roar tearing from his throat.
"Back!" Dante bellowed, lunging forward and sweeping both me and Sophie behind his massive frame just as the floor-to-ceiling glass of the library windows exploded inward in a shower of deadly, crystalline hail.
Gunfire ripped through the room.
The deafening, staccato crack of automatic weapons shattered the night. Slugs tore through the leather-bound books, raining shredded paper and splintered wood across the rug.
Sophie screamed—a high, piercing sound of pure terror.
I threw myself over her on the Persian rug, pressing her flat against the floorboards, covering her head with my torso as plaster showered down from the ceiling.
Dante didn't flinch. He dropped to one knee, bringing his weapon up with terrifying fluidity. He fired three controlled shots through the shattered window into the foggy terrace outside. A body tumbled over the stone balustrade, landing with a sickening thud on the flagstones below.
"Theresa! The safe room! Now!" Dante roared over the din.
"I am not leaving you!" the older woman shouted back, pulling a small silver revolver from the pocket of her silk robe with hands that were remarkably steady.
"Take Rachel and Sophie through the service pantry! Move!"
Footsteps pounded in the hallway outside—heavy, tactical boots. The wood of the library doors splintered as someone kicked the deadbolt from the outside.
Bruno charged the door.
"Bruno, no!" Sophie shrieked from beneath me.
The door burst open. A man in tactical gear and a ballistic vest crossed the threshold, his rifle raised. He never had a chance to shoulder the weapon. Bruno hit him at chest height, ninety pounds of furious muscle and jaw tearing into the man's throat, driving him backward into the corridor with a wet, bone-splintering crash.
Dante was already moving. He grabbed me by the bicep with one hand, hauling me and Sophie to our feet as if we weighed nothing.
"Run," he hissed into my ear, his eyes wild with adrenaline, completely unrecognizable from the composed billionaire who had employed me for three years. "Theresa, lead them down the pantry stairs to the wine cellar. There's a vault behind the third rack. Get them inside."
"What about you?" I cried, clutching Sophie against my chest, her tears soaking into my neck.
Dante slammed a fresh magazine into his pistol, the steel clicking home with absolute finality.
May you like
"I'm going to teach my uncle what happens when you knock on my family's door."
***
