CHAPTER 5 — The Daughter They Wanted Alive
The explosion hurled Joseph across the marble floor.
Smoke swallowed the room.
Security alarms screamed.
Marco burst through the doorway.
"Boss!"
Joseph ignored the blood running down his forehead.
"Evelyn!"
The elderly woman had fallen beneath shattered beams.
Joseph lifted the debris with both hands.
Despite everything...
He refused to leave her.
She looked up at him.
"You still have your mother's heart."
Joseph frowned.
"My mother?"
Evelyn smiled weakly.
"I promised her..."
"...I'd protect you."
Joseph stared.
"What are you talking about?"
Before she could answer...
Gunfire erupted outside.
Victor Moretti's soldiers stormed the estate.
Unlike Joseph's men...
They weren't trying to kill everyone.
They were searching.
Room by room.
Looking for only one person.
Audrey.
Across town...
Audrey and Rose were already moving toward another safe house.
Three armored SUVs raced through downtown Chicago.
Suddenly...
A black truck slammed into the lead vehicle.
The convoy flipped.
Masked men surrounded them within seconds.
Rose grabbed Audrey's hand.
"Run!"
Bullets shattered storefront windows.
Pedestrians screamed.
Audrey ducked behind an overturned taxi.
One attacker aimed directly at her.
Before he fired...
Another sniper eliminated him from nearly half a mile away.
One shot.
Perfect.
The mysterious sniper wasn't protecting Joseph.
He was protecting Audrey.
Moments later, every attacker retreated without taking another shot.
Marco arrived minutes afterward.
He looked around in confusion.
"They had you."
"They could have killed you."
Rose whispered,
"Then why didn't they?"
Back at headquarters...
Joseph finally received the answer.
An encrypted file appeared on his computer.
It contained only one sentence.
The girl isn't the target.
She's the key.
Attached beneath it...
A DNA report unlike anything Joseph had expected.
Audrey wasn't merely his daughter.
She carried an extremely rare inherited genetic marker shared by only one surviving bloodline.
A bloodline connected to billions of dollars hidden across Europe decades earlier.
Victor Moretti hadn't separated Joseph from his family because of revenge.
He had been searching...
May you like
For Audrey.
Even before she was born.
