Chapter 8 - The Sabotage
The night before the showcase was dead still.
At 2:00 AM, the Arts District was shrouded in a thick river fog that muffled the distant sounds of harbor horns. Inside the loft studio, the eight completed gowns stood shrouded in protective white garment bags along the central rolling rack, ready for transport to the Metropolitan Pavilion at dawn.
Hattie was asleep in the adjoining private apartment, exhausted from seventy-two hours of nonstop finishing work.
Downstairs, in the shadowed alley behind the cast-iron building, a black van pulled up silently, its engine cut.
Three men in dark tactical gear slipped out through the side door. Two of them carried pressurized canisters of industrial solvent; the third carried an acetylene torch.
"Valtrani’s guards rotate at the bottom of the hour," Dario Moretti’s lead enforcer muttered into a radio headset. "We go up the fire escape, bypass the fourth-floor glass, and douse the racks. Moretti said no dresses make it to that runway. Burn the whole floor."
The iron fire escape groaned faintly under their boots as they scaled the exterior wall. Within two minutes, they reached the fifth-floor skylight terrace. With practiced, brutal efficiency, the point man applied a diamond-tipped glass cutter to the terrace door, popping the lock with a muffled snap.
They stepped into the studio. The air smelled of lavender steam, cedar, and fresh silk.
"There they are," the point man hissed, pointing toward the row of white garment bags.
He unscrewed the valve on the chemical canister. But before he could spray the solvent across the first gown, the studio lights blazed to blinding life.
"Looking for something?"
Standing at the far end of the cutting table was Ennio Valtrani.
He was not in a suit. He wore a heavy black tactical sweater, combat boots, and his hands were resting calmly atop a twelve-gauge combat shotgun leveled dead at the point man’s chest. Flanking him from the shadows of the fabric shelves were four of his personal hitmen, assault rifles raised and locked.
The saboteurs froze, their eyes widening in sheer panic.
"Moretti is predictable," Ennio said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "He thinks like a rat in an alley. Did he really think I would leave my woman’s life's work guarded by a standard shift rotation?"
The point man swallowed hard, his fingers twitching near his waistband. "Valtrani, wait—"
*BOOM.*
The heavy blast of the shotgun didn't take a life—it blew the solvent canister out of the man’s hands, shredding the metal cylinder and blasting pressurized liquid across the brick wall, away from the garments. The concussive roar in the enclosed studio was deafening.
Before the saboteurs could recover, Ennio’s men swarmed them, tackling all three to the hardwood floor with brutal, bone-snapping force.
The door to the private apartment flew open, and Hattie rushed into the studio, wearing a robe, her curls wildly tumbling around her shoulders. "Ennio! What happened?!"
She stopped dead, taking in the scene: the shattered canister, the three men pinned to the floor in zip-ties, and Ennio standing tall amid the drifting smoke of gunpowder.
Ennio immediately lowered the shotgun, his hard expression softening the moment his eyes landed on her. He crossed the room in swift strides, catching her by the shoulders to inspect her.
"Are you hurt?" he demanded softly.
"No... no, I’m fine," she stammered, looking past him to the rolling rack. "The gowns?"
"Untouched," Ennio assured her, kissing her forehead gently. "Not a single thread was harmed."
He turned back toward the pinned men. He walked over to the point man, using the steel toe of his boot to kick the man’s chin upward.
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"Tell Moretti that his warehouse at Pier 42 is currently sinking into the bay," Ennio said coldly. "And tell Victoria Kincaid to wear her finest jewelry tomorrow. Because the police will need something shiny to catch the light when they put the handcuffs on her."
***
