Chapter 7 - The Viper Strikes
The victory at the Grand Belvedere had established Clara Rossi as a force to be reckoned with, but a wounded animal is always at its most lethal.
Two weeks after the summit, the autumn weather turned sharp and cold. I was sitting in the estate's glass-walled conservatory, completing my morning respiratory therapy with Isabella. The roses outside were withering under the frost, but inside the heated solarium, the sweet smell of jasmine and orchids filled the air.
"You handled yourself brilliantly at the council, Clara," Isabella said, pouring tea from a silver pot. "Salvatore would have admired your spirit. You have the heart of a lioness."
"I just wanted Costa to know that he can't terrify me anymore," I answered, adjusting the wool wrap around my shoulders. "He took my father. He almost took you. I won't let him take Dominic."
Isabella smiled tenderly. "You love him, don't you?"
The question hung in the warm air between us. Did I?
I had hated him when I first learned the truth. I had feared his cold, violent world. But over the past weeks, I had seen the man beneath the armor—the man who personally checked the locks on my suite every night, the man who had ensured my mother received the finest medical care in the world without ever demanding a single concession from me, the man who had stood between me and thirty loaded weapons without blinking.
Before I could answer, a sharp, deafening crack shattered the silence.
The reinforced glass roof above our heads exploded into thousands of sparkling shards.
"DOWN!" I screamed, lunging across the table and knocking Isabella to the flagstone floor, my body covering hers just as I had done in the ballroom three months ago.
High-caliber sniper rounds chewed into the marble planters, shredding leaves and stone in violent bursts. Sirens began wailing across the estate—a high-pitched, terrifying wail that signaled an active perimeter breach.
"Isabella! Clara!"
Dominic’s voice roared from the gallery corridor. The heavy reinforced doors of the conservatory were kicked open. Dominic ran in, an assault rifle tucked against his shoulder, firing three controlled bursts through the shattered ceiling toward the tree line on the eastern ridge.
"Enzo! Get the armored transport to the courtyard!" Dominic barked into his tactical radio. He dropped to his knees beside us, his eyes wild with fear as his hands scanned my back. "Clara! Did you get hit? Talk to me!"
"I'm fine! Isabella is unhurt!" I gasped, coughing through the plaster dust settling over us.
"We have to move. Now!" Dominic pulled both of us up, shielding our bodies with his own as he guided us through the debris of the ruined greenhouse.
As we reached the main foyer, the sound of gunfire from the front gates grew deafening. Heavy automatic weapons were hammering the estate’s outer perimeter. Several of Dominic's guards were returning fire from the upper balconies, brass casings raining down onto the grand staircase.
"Boss!" Enzo sprinted into the foyer, his face streaked with soot and blood. "It’s a coordinated assault! Two heavy trucks breached the south gate! But that’s not the worst of it..."
"What is it?" Dominic demanded, pushing Isabella and me behind the reinforced steel storm doors of the estate’s inner safe room.
"They had the tactical codes for the perimeter turrets," Enzo choked out, looking like a man who had seen a ghost. "They bypassed the security net completely. It wasn't an external hack, Dominic. It was an internal leak."
Dominic froze. His gray eyes turned to liquid nitrogen. "Marco."
Marco was Dominic’s first cousin—the head of logistics who had handled the surveillance archives and the estate’s technical defenses.
At that moment, the security monitor mounted inside the safe room blinked to life.
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The screen displayed the courtyard. Standing beside a convoy of black tactical vehicles was Victor Costa, accompanied by twenty heavily armed mercenaries—and standing right beside Costa, holding an assault rifle with a triumphant smirk on his face, was Marco Rossi.
"Dominic!" Marco's voice crackled through the estate's external intercom system. "Come out, cousin! Costa offered me fifty percent of the docks and the Kelly accounts. Your father built this family on sentimentality, and you're letting it die for a waitress! Bring the girl out, or we burn this entire valley to the ground!"
