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Everyone laughed when the mafia boss hired the quiet woman until she walked out of the kill room alone / Chapter 3 / 6

Chapter 4 - Six Men, One Room (The Crimson Hour)

Headline: THE CRIMSON ROOM: 6 Armed Killers Enter, 1 Quiet Woman Walks Out. What Happened Inside Behind Locked Doors?The clock inside Room 404 of the Marlowe Hotel ticked toward 11:00 PM. The room was opulent, adorned with heavy mahogany paneling, thick velvet curtains, and a massive crystal chandelier that cast jagged shadows across the floor.

Leo sat on one side of a long conference table, Dom standing rigidly behind him. Across from them sat Marcus Voss and his brother, Victor. But they hadn’t come alone. Standing in the corners of the room were four massive, heavily armed hitmen, their jackets bulging with the unmistakable shapes of submachine guns.

Quinn stood by the door, her hands buried deep in the pockets of her oversized black pea coat. To the Voss hitmen, she looked like an afterthought—a joke. One of them even smirked at her, winking. She didn't blink.

“The terms are simple, Leo,” Marcus Voss said, lighting a cigar. “You give up the North Side routes, you give us 40% of the dock revenue, and we let you keep breathing.”

Leo laughed, a cold, bitter sound. “That’s not a treaty, Marcus. That’s a surrender. I have fifty men down in the lobby right now.”

“No, you don’t,” Dom Russo’s voice cut through the air.

Leo froze. He turned his head slowly to look at his underboss. Dom was smiling, but his eyes were filled with venom. He drew a silenced pistol from his waistband and aimed it directly at Leo’s head.

“Dom…” Leo muttered, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. “You sold me out.”

“You got old, Leo. You got soft,” Dom sneered. “Hiring this bitch? Making us the laughingstock of Illinois? Marcus offered me a better deal. The Mercer empire belongs to me now. You die here, the Voss brothers take the docks, and we tell the family that the Voss guys ambushed you.”

Marcus Voss grinned, leaning back. “Six against two, Leo. Actually, six against one. I don't think your schoolteacher friend is going to be much help.”

The four hitmen drew their weapons, pointing them at Leo. The air in the room grew suffocatingly tight. Death was seconds away.

Then, a sound broke the silence.

It wasn't a cry of fear. It wasn't a plea for mercy.

It was a click.

The heavy steel deadbolt of Room 404 had just been turned from the inside. Quinn Harper had locked the door.

“What the hell is she doing?” Victor Voss barked, turning his gun toward her.

Quinn took her hands out of her pockets. She wasn’t holding a gun. She was holding a small, black military-grade flashbang canister.

“You all talk too much,” Quinn said.

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The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure terminal on my desk flashed a violent crimson. I hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, my eyes burning from staring at columns of ghost figures, duplicate invoices, and shell corporations linked to Dominic Rossi. But the red alert wasn’t from Rossi’s faction. It was an internal security flag originating from the estate’s main vault deep beneath the west wing.

The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure ter...

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scattering the light from the chandeliers. The muffled laughter died instantly, replaced by a suffocating, heavy silence that crept outward from the grand staircase.

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scatter...

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking out the clinical, terrifying silence of the kitchen. Evelyn Crane stood stiffly in front of my mahogany desk, her hands folded over her apron with the rigid precision of someone who had spent decades micromanaging every square inch of my estate. Behind her, Norah hovered near the doorway, clutching her clipboard like a shield.

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking...

Before anyone could pull a trigger, she dropped the canister at her own feet and closed her eyes.

BANG.

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