Chapter 7
Romina’s heart did not race; it froze.
She didn't waste a second threatening Dominic Monticello. She severed the call with a snap of her thumb, spun on her heel, and bolted through the shattered French doors of the mansion at a dead sprint.
"To the library!" she shouted over the comms channel. "All units, converge on the second floor! Now!"
Her leather shoes ate up the marble floor of the grand gallery. She took the sweeping curved staircase three steps at a time, her Glock held tight against her chest. Behind her, two capos were running hard, their heavy tactical boots thudding against the Persian runners.
The second floor was deathly quiet.
The amber wall sconces flickered gently in the drafts coming from the air conditioning ducts, but the heavy oak doors of the private library at the end of the hall stood slightly ajar.
Romina’s stomach dropped.
She had locked that door from the outside with an encrypted biometric deadbolt.
As she reached the threshold, she saw the electronic keypad hanging loose from the wall, its wiring cut and sparking with tiny blue arcs of electricity. On the floor just inside the door lay the body of old Donald, the mansion’s chief butler of twenty years, a dark pool of blood spreading beneath his silver hair from a single contact wound behind his ear.
"Crispin!" Romina’s voice tore from her throat—not the voice of a Mafia boss, but the raw, terrified cry of a mother facing her worst nightmare.
She cleared the doorway with her weapon raised, sweeping the cavernous room in two seconds.
The leather settee was empty.
A discarded picture book lay open on the carpet, its pages torn. Beside the mahogany desk, little Etta’s cream cardigan lay crumpled on the floor, one of its pearl buttons ripped free.
"Over here!" a voice snarled from the shadow behind the heavy velvet window drapes.
A man stepped into the faint evening light. He wore no tactical gear; he was dressed in the gray service apron of the catering staff, but his eyes were dead, his movements smooth and professional. In his left hand, he held five-year-old Etta by the collar of her party dress, her feet dangling six inches above the floor, her small face red with silent, suffocating terror.
In his right hand, he held a suppressed pistol pressed firmly against the temple of seven-year-old Crispin, who was kneeling on the floorboards, his small hands clutching the edge of the mahogany desk.
"Drop the iron, Romina," the caterer said, his voice flat, American, and chillingly indifferent. "Drop it right now, or the boy’s brains repaint the ceiling."
Romina stopped dead in the center of the Persian rug.
Her breath came in slow, measured drags through her nostrils. Her hands did not shake. The Glock in her grip remained leveled directly between the man’s eyes, twenty feet away.
"You touch my children," Romina whispered, the words vibrating with a darkness that seemed to swallow the room, "and you will spend three weeks dying in my cellar before I let you choke on your own tongue."
"You don't have three weeks, lady," the gunman replied, his finger tightening on the trigger against Crispin’s temple. "Monticello wants the children alive, but he told me one would suffice to force your signature on the port charters. Drop the gun, or I make the boy redundant."
Crispin looked up through his tangled hair. His fair skin was pale, but his small jaw was locked tight. His eyes met his mother’s.
He didn't scream. He didn't beg.
May you like
He remembered what she had told him on the terrace.
With sudden, savage ferocity, Crispin twisted his neck and bit down with all the strength in his seven-year-old jaw directly into the meat of the gunman’s wrist.
