Chapter 4 - The Ambush at Dawn
“Get down!” Declan roared, shoving Meredith hard onto the Turkish rug as a second bullet ricocheted off the iron radiator with a piercing screech.
The estate’s security alarm shrieked to life, flooding the mansion with blaring sirens and flashing red emergency lights. Outside on the manicured lawns, floodlights snapped on, cutting through the pre-dawn fog.
Declan drew his custom Sig Sauer P226 from his shoulder holster in one fluid motion, rolling behind the heavy oak desk just as a barrage of suppressed automatic gunfire chewed through the remaining glass panes of the study windows.
“Victor! Status!” Declan barked into his encrypted tactical comms unit.
Static hissed for half a second before Victor Reyes, head of security, roared back over the channel: "Boss! We’ve got an active paramilitary breach at the front gates and the western perimeter wall! At least six heavily armed operators in tactical gear! They’re using night-vision and thermal optics!"
“They’re not here to rob the house,” Declan growled, his eyes flashing with lethal fury as he glanced down at Meredith, who was huddled under the desk, weeping uncontrollably in terror. “They’re here to wipe out every witness and recover the device. Do not let them reach the north wing!”
"Understood, Boss! My boys are holding the ground-floor staircases! Stay put!"
Declan didn't stay put. He knew exactly who sent them. If Meredith was connected to the syndicate hit squad that tried to infiltrate the estate six months ago, then the moment she failed to break his daughters’ sanity, the syndicate decided to eliminate the entire family in one fell swoop.
Leaving a sobbing Meredith locked inside the study, Declan sprinted out into the dimly lit hallway, his tactical boots pounding against the antique Persian carpets. He moved with the terrifying, calculated efficiency of a man who had fought his way to the top of the underworld before turning his empire into a legitimate global conglomerate.
As he reached the grand staircase, two masked operators in matte-black combat gear dropped silently from the second-floor skylight, their automatic rifles swinging toward his chest.
Declan didn't hesitate. He raised his Sig Sauer and fired twice with blinding speed.
CRACK! CRACK!
The lead operator dropped instantly, taking a round through his ceramic chest plate and collapsing backward down the marble stairs. The second operator fired wildly, chipping the historic plaster walls before Declan closed the distance, grabbed the barrel of the assault rifle, and slammed his elbow violently into the man’s throat. The mercenary crumpled into a heap of unconscious limbs.
Declan stepped over the body, clearing the landing, and bolted down the corridor toward the north wing—straight toward the nursery where Emma Reed and his twin daughters were still locked inside.
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His heart hammered against his ribs not with fear for himself, but with a paralyzing terror for the young woman who had risked her life to rip open a stuffed bear at three o'clock in the morning.
If anything happened to Emma, or to his little girls, Declan knew the man buried deep beneath his tailored suits would return with a vengeance that would burn New York to ash.
