Chapter 4 - The Night of the Crimson Wolves
Hook: The lights go out, the wolves come out to play, but they forgot one thing: Seraphina Permone isn't a lamb. She is the alpha.
Red emergency lights flashed on, casting a bloody, rhythmic glow over the shattered lobby. From the upper balconies, black-clad mercenaries wearing night-vision goggles began rappelling down on tactical ropes. They wore the patch of the Crimson Wolves—an elite, illegal paramilitary group known for executing high-profile political assassinations.
"Kill the girl! Leave no witnesses!" a voice shouted from above.
The wealthy guests screamed, scrambling like rats, trampling each other to find an exit that wasn't sealed by titanium shutters.
Marcus and his three personal guards formed a defensive circle around Seraphina, firing their suppressed weapons up into the shadows. Two mercenaries fell from their ropes, crashing onto the marble below, but more were coming. The sheer volume of gunfire was overwhelming.
"Madam, we need to move you to the secure bunker beneath the vault!" Marcus shouted over the din of gunfire, his shoulder bleeding from a graze wound. "There are too many of them!"
Seraphina sat perfectly still in her ruined wheelchair, the red light reflecting off her cold violet eyes. She didn't look like a target. She looked like a judge.
"Marcus," she said, her voice perfectly level despite a bullet smashing into the pillar an inch from her head. "Do you remember what my father told you before he died?"
Marcus blinked, stunned by the question in the middle of a warzone. "He... he said to protect you with my life!"
"No," Seraphina corrected him, reaching into the hidden compartment beneath her wheelchair’s seat cushion. "He told you to protect the world from me if I ever got angry."
With a swift, fluid motion, Seraphina reached down and pulled a hidden lever on the side of her wheelchair.
Clack.
The entire frame of the wheelchair shifted. The metal armrests detached, revealing two hidden, ultra-compact submachine guns engineered from lightweight titanium. But that wasn't the shock.
The real shock came next.
Seraphina Permone, the woman the world believed was completely paralyzed from the waist down, placed her feet firmly on the marble floor.
And she stood up.
Marcus’s jaw dropped. The hotel manager, who was hiding under a couch, let out a strangled gasp.
Seraphina didn't just stand; she moved with the grace of a trained apex predator. Her limp, weak persona vanished, replaced by an aura of absolute dominance. Her paralysis had been a three-year lie—a carefully orchestrated facade to make her enemies complacent, to draw out the traitors who thought they were attacking a defenseless girl.
A mercenary dropped from a rope right in front of her, raising his rifle.
Seraphina didn't blink. She stepped forward, sidestepped his aim with terrifying speed, and jammed the barrel of her weapon directly under his helmet’s visor.
Thwip.
The mercenary dropped instantly. Seraphina caught his rifle before it hit the ground, spun around, and unleashed a devastating, precise volley of gunfire up into the mezzanine. Three more mercenaries tumbled over the railing, dead before they hit the ground.
"You thought I was trapped in this chair," Seraphina whispered, her voice echoing through the gunfire as she advanced toward the center of the lobby, firing with lethal accuracy. "But this chair was the only thing keeping you safe from me."
In less than three minutes, the lobby fell silent again. The twenty elite mercenaries of the Crimson Wolves lay neutralized on the floor. Seraphina stood amidst the bodies, her gray hoodie stained with soot, her violet eyes burning with a terrifying fire.
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She tossed the empty rifle aside and looked at Marcus, who was staring at her in absolute awe.
"Call the private jet," Seraphina commanded, wiping a drop of blood from her cheek. "It's time to pay my brother a visit. Let’s see if he’s ready to inherit the empire."
