Chapter 4 - The Trap is Sprung
The silence of the penthouse was broken by a sound so faint only a prey animal—or a survivor—would hear it.
Click.
Kara woke up instantly. The sedative had worn off, leaving her alert but hyper-vigilant. The penthouse was dark. Daniel wasn't in bed beside her. She reached for her phone on the nightstand, but the screen read: NO SIGNAL.
The signal jammers were active.
Panic, cold and sharp, flooded her veins. She remembered what Daniel taught her: If the security fails, you don't hide. You move.
She slipped out of bed, her bare feet making no sound on the hardwood floors. She didn't grab a knife from the kitchen; she went straight to Daniel's side of the closet. She pressed a hidden panel behind his suits. A small, biometric safe popped open. Inside was a compact 9mm pistol.
She had hated guns. She had feared them. But looking down at her stomach, knowing she wasn't just protecting herself anymore, her hands stopped shaking. She gripped the weapon just like Daniel had trained her to do during their quiet weekends upstate.
Heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed in the hallway outside the master suite.
"Where are you, little trophy?" a voice call out. It wasn't Liam. It was a thick, gravelly voice—one of Moretti’s professional hitmen. "Your husband is busy destroying docks. He forgot to lock his own front door."
Kara backed into the en-suite bathroom, locking the heavy oak door. She stood in the dark, pointing the gun at the center of the wood.
Boom.
The door shuddered under a heavy kick.
Boom.
The wood splintered. A large, bald man in tactical gear busted through. He saw Kara, his eyes widening in surprise as he noticed the gun in her hand. He raised his own weapon—
BANG.
Kara didn't hesitate. She pulled the trigger. The bullet caught the man squarely in the shoulder, knocking him backward into the bedroom. He cursed loudly, dropping his gun.
Before he could recover, the entire glass wall of the bedroom shattered inward.
A figure descended from the roof on a tactical rope, crashing through the glass like a fallen angel. It was Daniel. He hadn't left her unprotected; he had used himself as bait to draw Moretti’s assassins into the open.
Daniel landed gracefully, unhooking his harness, and within a second, his silenced pistol fired twice. The hitman went silent permanently.
Daniel dropped his weapon, sprinting into the bathroom, pulling Kara into his arms. He was covered in glass dust, his suit torn, breathing heavily.
"You shot him," Daniel breathed, looking at the man on the floor, then down at Kara, his eyes filled with a terrifying mixture of awe and fierce pride.
"He tried to touch our baby," Kara said, her voice steady, though tears were finally leaking out.
May you like
Daniel cupped her face. "It ends tonight. No more hiding. No more threats. Declan is outside with a full transport. You are going to the safehouse in the Adirondacks. And I am going to end the Moretti line."
THE HOOK: As Kara was escorted down the secure service elevator, she realized something horrible. In the chaos, she had dropped the velvet pouch again—and on the back of the ultrasound paper, written in fresh blood from the hitman, was a single address: The Dry Docks. Liam is gone.
