Chapter 6 - Midnight SiegeThe explosion was deafening—a white-hot blinding light accompanied by a shockwave that threw me against the heavy glass coffee table.
Smoke billowed into the living room, thick and suffocating. Through the ringing in my ears, I heard shouting—heavy combat boots crunching over shattered glass.
"Get the kid! Find the boy!" a distorted voice barked through a tactical radio.
"Leo!" I screamed, lunging through the cloud of smoke toward the back bedroom.
I was cut off by a towering man in tactical gear with no insignia. He shoved a heavy carbon-fiber rifle butt into my chest, knocking the wind completely out of my lungs. I slammed onto the floor, gasping for air as blood pooled from a cut on my forehead.
"Julian!" Frankie came sliding around the corner, firing two shots from his silenced sidearm. The tactical operative grunted, dropping to his knee, but two more masked men stepped out from the smoke, pinning Frankie against the wall with high-voltage tasers. Frankie collapsed, his body convulsing on the floor.
"Marcus..." I rasped, trying to crawl toward the bedroom hallway. "Marcus, you bastard..."
Through the haze, Marcus Thorne walked out of the private elevator, wearing a tailored winter coat and a gas mask pushed up onto his forehead. He looked down at me with cold, detached boredom.
"I told you on Monday, Julian," Marcus said, stepping over the shattered glass. "You don't have the stomach for what it takes to protect an empire. Clara didn't either."
"You burnt her alive," I spat, spitting blood onto his designer shoes. "You murdered your own sister!"
"She was going to destroy the family name!" Marcus snapped, his calm facade breaking into a momentary mask of rage. "She was going to give everything to the authorities! I built Vance Global into what it is today! I wasn't going to let a sentimental woman tear it down because of some starving children in Africa!"
He pointed to two of his mercenaries. "Secure the perimeter. Make it look like a tragic home-invasion robbery gone wrong. The grieving, unstable CEO finally snapped, fired his own bodyguards, and set fire to his penthouse."
"Where is the boy?!" one of the masked mercenaries shouted from the bedroom hallway. "He's not in the room!"
Marcus’s eyes widened in sudden fury. "What do you mean he's not in the room? Find him!"
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I looked through the smoke toward the kitchen counter.
Savannah was gone. And so was Leo.
