Chapter 4 - The Siege at Midnight
“Down!” I roared, instinct taking over before logic could even process the threat.
I lunged forward, grabbing Clare by the waist and tackling her behind the heavy mahogany desk just as a volley of automatic gunfire chewed through the study’s glass windows, raining shards of razor-sharp crystal across the floor. Wood splinters flew, and the air filled with the acrid, choking smell of cordite and high-velocity lead.
“Vincent!” Clare gasped, her hands gripping my shoulders. “What is that?”
“Enemies who picked a very bad night to test my security,” I snarled, drawing the heavy Sig Sauer pistol from my shoulder holster in one fluid, practiced motion.
The security alarms throughout the mansion began to wail in a high-pitched, deafening shriek. Heavy boots echoed down the marble hallway outside the study. Someone was inside the house. Luca and his tactical team must have been intercepted at the perimeter gates, leaving us completely exposed in the heart of the estate.
I pressed Clare firmly against the reinforced steel kick-plate at the base of the built-in bookshelves, shielding her entire body with my own broad frame. “Stay here. Do not move an inch, no matter what you hear.”
“No,” she whispered, grabbing my sleeve with a grip of iron. Her eyes weren't filled with the trembling terror of an innocent civilian; they held the fierce, unyielding grit of a woman who had survived twenty years in the shadow of the mafia without losing her soul. “If we die tonight, we die together. I’m not hiding under a desk while you fight an army alone.”
I looked down at her—my curvy, brilliant, stubborn wife holding a heavy brass paperweight like a dagger—and a grim, reckless laugh escaped my chest.
“God help any bastard who tries to get past you,” I muttered.
The study door swung open violently. A man in black tactical gear and a balaclava stepped through the threshold, his submachine gun raised, sweeping the room for targets.
He never got the chance to fire.
I pivoted around the corner of the desk, raised my Sig Sauer, and put two precise rounds straight through his center mass. He dropped like a stone, his weapon clattering across the Persian rug.
Step two didn't wait. A second intruder rushed through the doorway, firing blindly. I shoved Clare lower, returning fire and clipping his shoulder, sending him spinning backward into the hallway wall.
“Vincent! Window!” Clare cried out, pointing frantically.
Another silhouette was climbing through the shattered side window of the library, holding a heavy breaching charge. Without thinking, Clare reared back and hurled the heavy brass paperweight with terrifying accuracy straight across the room. It caught the intruder squarely in the temple, stunning him mid-climb just long enough for me to whip around and drop him before he could trigger the explosive.
Silence descended on the room as quickly as the violence had erupted, broken only by the wailing alarms and the ragged breathing of the two of us behind the desk.
Then, heavy, familiar footsteps echoed down the hall.
“Boss!” Luca’s voice barked frantically through the smoke-filled doorway, his pistol drawn as he rushed into the study, followed by three armed guards. “The perimeter jammer’s down! We cleared the courtyard, but—holy hell.” He stared at the bodies littering the floor, then at us. “You two okay?”
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“We’re fine,” I said steadily, helping Clare to her feet and brushing the glass shards off her shoulders. I looked down at my wife, whose chest was heaving, her hair wild and glorious, her eyes burning with fierce life.
“Call the cleaning crew, Luca,” I ordered coldly. “And send word to the council. Tell them the traitor who sold our gate codes is going to spend the rest of his very short life explaining himself to me.”
