Chapter 3 - The Wolves at the Gate
The distant whine of a heavy-duty cutting torch cut through the residual rumble of the storm. Someone was breaching the front perimeter, and they weren't using a key.
"They found me," Adeline whispered, the color draining entirely from her face. She tried to scramble backward, clutching the baby tighter, but her postpartum body betrayed her, and she slumped back against the bricks with a suppressed groan of pain.
"Stay down," I ordered, my tone shifting instantly from shock to the cold, calculated authority of a mafia boss who had survived a dozen assassination attempts.
I tapped the comms piece hidden inside my collar. "Viktor, report."
Static hissed in my ear for a second before Viktor’s gruff voice broke through. "Boss, we’ve got company. Three unmarked black SUVs just rammed the front gate. They’re heavily armed, wearing tactical gear, and they bypassed our exterior cameras in under thirty seconds. Professional hit squad."
"How many?" I asked, unbuttoning my jacket to draw my custom Sig Sauer P226.
"At least eight at the front entrance, cutting through the reinforced steel. Security room feeds are down. Boss... they know the layout of the mansion."
That sentence froze my blood. Only three people alive knew the internal security blind spots of the Falcone estate: me, my head of security, and Rosalind.
"Lock down the panic room in the east wing," I commanded. "Get Bernadette and the staff down there immediately. Do not engage until I give the word."
"Copy that, Boss. What about you?"
"I’m in the greenhouse. And I'm not leaving."
I clicked off the comms and turned back to Adeline. She was watching me with a mixture of terror and fierce calculation. She knew as well as I did that if these men breached the greenhouse, none of us would walk out alive. They weren't here to negotiate or collect a ransom; they were here to finish wiping out the last remaining branch of the Vance bloodline, including a newborn infant who was barely an hour old.
"Elias," Bernadette pleaded, stepping out from the shadows of the doorway, her face pale. "You can't fight an entire squad by yourself out in the open. Let me take the girl and the baby through the underground drainage tunnel. You create a distraction."
"No," Adeline interrupted, her voice surprisingly firm as she struggled to her feet, clutching the baby in one arm while using the other to steady herself against the damp brick wall. "If we split up, they’ll hunt us down one by one. And they have thermal imaging. They’ll find the tunnel within five minutes."
She was right. Professional mercenaries didn't leave loose ends.
I stepped over the shattered pots, pulling two extra magazines from my belt and tossing one toward Bernadette, who caught it with the practiced reflexes of a woman who had survived twenty years in my employ.
"Bernadette, take the eastern service path toward the stables. There’s an armored vehicle parked in the third bay with a sat-phone. Call my regional captain, Marcus. Tell him code Red-Iron-Nine. He’ll bring fifty men through the back ridge road within twenty minutes."
"And you?" Bernadette demanded, her eyes flashing with defiance.
I looked back at Adeline, then down at the tiny baby girl sleeping soundly amidst the chaos of a war zone. For three years, I had believed my heart was buried beneath the cold soil of this greenhouse, frozen in the grief of losing Rosalind. But as I cocked the slide of my pistol, feeling the familiar, deadly weight in my palm, I realized something terrifying.
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My heart wasn't dead. It had simply been waiting for a reason to wake up.
"I'm going to go welcome our guests," I said, a cold, humorless smile touching my lips. "Nobody hunts on my land without paying the toll."
