Chapter 21
The metallic click echoed like a gunshot in the pitch-black living room of the Montana compound. Before Alessandra could raise her weapon, the room was suddenly flooded with blinding, high-intensity tactical lights, stripping away all shadows and exposing her strike team.
"Drop your weapons, Alessandra," a smooth, cultured American accent commanded from the darkness near the hallway. "Or I detonate the charges wired under the floorboards."
Alessandra didn't flinch. Her eyes narrowed into lethal slits, adjusting to the glare. She didn't recognize the voice, but the threat was credible enough to force her hand. She slowly lowered her suppressed sidearm and dropped it onto the hardwood floor. Silas and her elite strike team reluctantly followed suit, their weapons clattering in the tense silence.
A man stepped into the light. He was tall, dressed in a sharp, tailored suit that looked entirely out of place in the rural wilderness. He had fair skin, a neatly trimmed beard, and a cruel, arrogant smirk. He wasn't Vargas.
"Who are you?" Alessandra asked, her voice a low, mesmerizing whisper.
"My name is Julian," the man said, stepping closer to the bound figures of Vincent, Francesca, and Bianca. "I represent a coalition of East Coast families. We heard about the little coup you pulled in Chicago. You extorted Morreti, and when Vargas killed him, you assumed it was a local dispute."
Julian chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. "Vargas works for us. We funded his takeover of the Commission. And now, we are taking the Romano shipping lanes."
"You went through a lot of trouble to lure me out here," Alessandra stated calmly, projecting a terrifying, sociopathic detachment. "You could have just attacked my estate."
"Your estate is a fortress, protected by an army of loyalists and a heavily fortified panic room for your son," Julian noted. "But we knew you couldn't resist a threat to your bloodline. Even the garbage you threw away has value if it draws the Queen off the board."
Julian drew a heavy silver pistol and aimed it directly at Francesca's head. The former matriarch screamed through the duct tape, tears streaming down her powdered cheeks.
"Sign the shipping contracts over to my coalition, Alessandra," Julian demanded, pulling a folded document from his jacket. "Or I execute your mother right in front of you."
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Alessandra looked at Francesca, the woman who had coldly watched a four-year-old child beg for air. Alessandra’s pretty, adorable features hardened into a mask of pure, unforgiving ice.
"Shoot her," Alessandra said.
