Chapter 7 - The Midnight Siege
The storm broke over the Long Island sound at eleven o'clock. Lightning tore through the sky in blinding sheets, followed by thunder that shook the heavy double-paned glass of the second-floor windows. Downstairs, the estate was blacked out. Dante’s men had cut the main power lines at the gate, plunging the mansion into a sea of ink lit only by the green emergency exit signs and the flicker of distant lightning.
Poppy was asleep in the master bedroom’s walk-in wardrobe, tucked beneath three down comforters with her gray rabbit clutched to her chest. I sat on the floor beside the open doorway, the cold weight of a semiautomatic pistol resting in my lap. My hands were slick with cold sweat, but every maternal instinct I had ever felt was screaming at full volume.
In the bedroom, Matteo stood by the window, dressed in a black tactical sweater, leaning heavily against the wall to support his injured ribs. In his hand was a heavy-caliber handgun.
""They breached the carriage house,"" Matteo whispered, his phone screen glowing faintly with silent alerts from the external infrared cameras. ""Four men. Professionals. Dante hired foreign contractors. They don't know the layout of the interior.""
""How long until your men arrive?"" I asked, my voice barely a breath.
""Twenty minutes. Marco had to bypass a roadblock Dante set up on the expressway.""
Suddenly, the faint shatter of glass echoed from the ground floor.
A floorboard creaked in the hallway directly outside the master suite.
Matteo stepped away from the window, moving with the fluid, terrifying silence of a predator that had spent twenty years surviving ambushes. He didn't look like an invalid anymore. He looked like an archangel of retribution. He signaled to me with three fingers: Stay down. Do not fire unless they enter the threshold.
The bedroom door handle jiggled.
A silenced pop hissed through the darkness—a bullet tore through the lock mechanism, blowing the brass apart. The door swung open. A masked man stepped through, tactical rifle raised, sweeping the room.
Before the intruder could register the corner, Matteo lunged from the shadows. With brutal, calculated efficiency, he redirected the barrel of the rifle toward the ceiling, driving the heel of his palm upward into the man's throat. A sickening crunch echoed through the room. The intruder collapsed without uttering a sound.
But a second man appeared in the doorway behind him, his weapon leveled directly at Matteo's exposed back.
""Matteo!"" I screamed.
Without thinking, without hesitating, I raised the heavy pistol with both hands, aimed at the silhouette in the doorway, and pulled the trigger.
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The recoil bucked violently against my wrists. The deafening report tore through the silence of the room, lighting the hallway in a blinding flash of orange fire. The second gunman gasped, clutching his shoulder as he stumbled backward into the corridor, dropping his weapon.
Matteo didn't waste a second. He swept the dropped rifle off the floor, leveled it down the hall, and fired three controlled bursts. The remaining footsteps retreated in frantic disarray down the stairs.
