Chapter 5 - The West Wing
I jammed the hospital bed into the doorway seconds before the steel door slammed shut.
Metal screamed.
The frame bent.
A thin gap remained.
"Move!" I shouted.
Elias crawled through first, clutching his side. I followed just as a sweet chemical smell entered the cell.
We ran.
The mansion I had grown up in no longer felt like home. Doors locked automatically ahead of us. Lights shut off behind us. Men I had paid for years moved through the halls with weapons raised, taking orders from my mother.
Vittoria had prepared for this.
Prepared for me.
We reached the library, where my security chief, Marco Bell, stood with six men.
He lifted his rifle.
I did not.
"Pick carefully," I told him.
Marco's jaw flexed. "Your mother says you've been compromised."
"My mother imprisoned my wife under this house."
A few men glanced at each other.
"She says Mrs. Rossi tried to sell family records to the Calabrians."
"Then ask yourself why the evidence is a hospital bed and an empty crib."
Nobody moved.
I pulled the baby bracelet from my pocket and tossed it onto the table.
Marco stared at it.
"She told us the child wasn't yours," he said.
I laughed once, without humor.
"Of course she did."
That was how my mother worked. She didn't force one lie on everyone. She gave each person the lie most likely to control them.
Marco lowered his weapon.
Two of his men did the same.
Three did not.
The first shot shattered a lamp.
The library erupted.
I flipped the table and fired from behind it. Marco tackled one gunman while Elias crawled toward the fireplace. Books burst apart above us. Glass sprayed across the floor.
Ten seconds later, it was over.
One man fled. Two were down. Marco stood breathing hard, his sleeve torn by a bullet.
"I'm with you," he said.
"Then lock down the property from the outside. Nobody leaves."
"Vittoria already did. She took the north convoy ten minutes ago."
My stomach turned.
"With Grace?"
"I don't know."
Elias, still crouched beside the fireplace, pulled a loose brick from the wall.
Behind it was a small black notebook.
"Grace told me to hide this," he said.
I opened it.
Inside were handwritten dates, drug dosages, guard rotations, and one address circled so hard the pen had torn through the paper.
An abandoned maternity clinic forty miles north.
At the bottom of the page, Grace had written:
IF THEY TAKE NOAH, THIS IS WHERE SHE'LL GO.
Noah.
My son's name.
The name Grace and I had chosen before I left.
I looked up.
"Get the cars."
Marco shook his head.
"Road gate's sealed."
Elias pointed toward the floor.
"Then we don't use the road."
He pulled a brass lever inside the fireplace.
May you like
The bookcase beside us slid open.
Behind it, stone steps descended into blackness.
