Chapter 17 - Siege of the River Estate
By three o'clock in the morning, a thick, suffocating fog rolled off the Hudson River, blanketing the manicured lawns and stone terraces of the Rossi estate in ghostly white. Inside the darkened mansion, every light had been extinguished except for the green glow of tactical night-vision monitors in the security command room.
I stood beside Luca near the reinforced floor-to-ceiling windows of the second-story library, looking down into the courtyard. The silence was absolute, heavy with the terrifying calm that precedes a slaughter.
Suddenly, the security monitors flickered. A high-pitched alarm sounded from the main console, followed by the dull, synchronized pop of the perimeter power transformers being blown by targeted explosives. The estate’s auxiliary emergency lights snapped on, casting eerie red shadows down the corridors.
"They're inside the gates," Marcus announced through Luca’s earpiece, his voice flat and controlled. "Two armored delivery trucks rammed the southern security gate. They're using smoke canisters and flash suppressors. Salvatore brought twenty veteran gunmen with him."
A deafening blast echoed through the ground floor as the heavy oak double doors of the grand foyer were blown off their hinges by breaching charges. Glass shattered across the lower gallery, followed immediately by the rapid, rhythmic bark of automatic weapons fire. The siege had begun.
"Hold the grand staircase!" Luca roared into his radio, pulling me back behind the reinforced mahogany desk of the library. "Elena, stay low!"
Gunfire erupted below like rolling thunder. The sounds of combat—shouts of agony, ricocheting bullets, the heavy thud of falling bodies—echoed through the hollow mansion. Luca leaned around the library doorway, providing precision suppressing fire down the hallway to prevent the intruders from flanking the service stairs. Every shot he took was measured, lethal, and unhesitating.
Then, from the lower foyer, an amplified, rasping voice echoed through the house, projected through a portable loudspeaker.
"Rossi!" the voice wheezed, cracked with age, hatred, and venom. "Come down and face your judgment! You took my family’s empire! You took my honor! Send David’s bastard daughter down to the courtyard, and I will let your men walk away with their lives!"
Salvatore Moretti had arrived.
Luca’s jaw clenched so hard I heard the enamel grind. He glanced at me, his eyes dark with protective fury. "He is in the foyer. Marcus is pinned down near the east wing."
"We can't let him burn the house down," I said, pointing toward the heavy smoke beginning to billow up from the central staircase. Salvatore's men had tossed incendiary grenades into the ground-floor dining room. Flames were already licking at the historic woodwork.
"We don't let him burn it," Luca said, a terrifying resolve settling over his features. "We end it right here."
Luca reloaded his sidearm with a fresh magazine, took a deep breath that made him wince from his healing shoulder wound, and took my hand. "Elena, stick to my six. If anyone raises a weapon toward you, drop them immediately."
We moved through the smoke-filled second-floor mezzanine, stepping over shattered marble and spent brass casings. Looking down from the balustrade into the foyer, the scene was horrific. Flames danced across the tapestries, illuminating the wreckage of the entrance. Standing in the center of the hall, supported by two heavily armed lieutenants, was Don Salvatore Moretti.
He looked like a corpse walking out of a tomb. Half his face sagged from the stroke, his skin sickly gray, but his remaining eye burned with a feverish, psychopathic hatred.
"Looking for me, Salvatore?" Luca’s voice boomed down from the mezzanine, cutting through the crackle of the flames like a thunderclap.
Salvatore's head snapped up, his sneer exposing yellowed teeth. "Rossi! And the little orphan girl! Look at the lovers, waiting to burn together in their ivory tower!"
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At Salvatore’s signal, his two remaining lieutenants raised their weapons toward the balcony. But before their fingers could squeeze the triggers, two rifle shots rang out from the rear service door. Marcus stepped into the hall, smoke pouring from his rifle barrel as Salvatore's guards collapsed dead onto the burning rug.
Salvatore was left standing completely alone amidst the flames, clutching an old snub-nosed revolver in his trembling, arthritic hand.
