Chapter 6 - The Trap is Sprung
The grand foyer had become a slaughterhouse of memories.
The crystal chandelier that Isabelle had chosen in Venice lay shattered across the black-and-white marble tiles. Bullets ripped through the oil portraits of my ancestors, tearing canvas and showering the stairs in splinters of gilded wood.
Six men in black tactical gear moved in a sweep formation across the entryway, assault rifles raised.
I didn't give them the chance to establish a perimeter.
I stepped out from the library doorway and fired the Benelli M4 shotgun three times in deafening succession. The heavy 12-gauge buckshot tore through the lead mercenary, lifting him off his feet and throwing him into the shattered glass. The second blast caught the flanker, blowing him through the double doors of the dining room.
"Romano’s on the left!" someone screamed.
Automatic fire raked the doorframe above my head, chewing the oak into matchsticks. Concrete dust and drywall blinded the air. I dropped flat, rolling across the threshold as bullets tracked my movement, then came up on one knee behind a marble statue of Apollo Isabelle had bought at an estate sale.
I fired twice more. Another man dropped, clutching his shattered collarbone.
"Flank the back stairs!" the mercenary commander shouted. "The girl and the brats are heading down to the service tunnel! Vance said to take the kids as leverage!"
Cold terror seized my chest.
They knew about the tunnel.
Marcus had known this house for fifteen years. He had helped me reinforce the structural blueprints after Nora was born. He knew every bolt, every escape route, every secret cellar.
I abandoned my cover.
Ignoring the crossfire, I charged across the open foyer, firing my sidearm with lethal precision. A round clipped my left shoulder, spinning me, tearing through meat and cloth like a red-hot iron, but the adrenaline surging through my veins drowned the pain. I put two bullets in the mercenary commander’s chest before he could swing his rifle, kicked his weapon across the floor, and sprinted down the narrow north service corridor.
The lights in the hallway had been cut. Only the red emergency backup bulbs glowed in the darkness, casting long, bloody shadows against the walls.
At the end of the hall, the heavy steel door leading to the cellar stood wide open.
From below, I heard a child’s scream.
Nora.
"Daddy!"
The sound of my youngest daughter’s voice—full of pure, undiluted terror—shattered every remaining fragment of restraint in my mind.
I leaped down the cellar stairs, clearing five steps at a time, my boots hitting the stone floor with a bone-jarring impact.
The cellar was dimly lit by swinging yellow work lights.
At the far end of the corridor, near the entrance to the old bootlegger tunnel, stood three men. One was holding Grace against the stone wall, a combat knife pressed to her throat. Grace was fighting like a wildcat, kicking and clawing, bleeding from a cut across her forehead.
On the ground beside her, huddling together like terrified kittens, were Olivia and Sophie, both throwing their bodies over three-year-old Nora.
And standing in the center of the tunnel archway, holding a snub-nosed revolver in his uninjured left hand, was Marcus Vance.
He had cut his zip-ties using a broken wine bottle from the rack. His face was a mask of congealed blood and swollen flesh, but his eyes burned with psychotic triumph.
"Drop the gun, Dominic!" Marcus roared, raising the revolver and aiming it directly at Olivia’s head. "Drop it right now, or I swear to God I’ll finish what I started outside that preschool!"
I skidded to a halt twenty feet away.
My Benelli was empty, dropped on the stairs. All I had was the Kimber 1911 in my right hand, three rounds remaining in the magazine.
"Let the children go, Marcus," I said. My voice was eerily calm, stripped of all human emotion. "This is between you and me. Take the boat. Take the offshore accounts. Just let the girls walk."
"You think I'm stupid?!" Marcus shrieked, saliva flying from his lips. "The minute I let them go, you hunt me to the ends of the earth! No, Dominic. The kids come with me. They’re my insurance policy. They’re going to watch me take everything you ever built."
He cocked the hammer of the revolver.
Olivia looked up from the floor. Her face was smeared with dust and tears, but she wasn't crying anymore. She looked at Marcus’s hand—at the silver wolf ring.
Then she looked at me.
And in the cold, damp dark of that cellar, Olivia spoke clearly, her voice ringing off the stone walls like a silver bell.
May you like
"You can't have us," she said. "Our daddy is here."
***
