CHAPTER 2 — The Bloodline Hidden Beneath the Dust
By breakfast...
Weston already knew Holly had lied.
He just didn't know why.
The childcare agency reported she grew up in Ohio.
Public school.
No criminal record.
No college degree.
No living parents.
No military history.
No riding competitions.
No wealth.
A completely ordinary life.
Too ordinary.
Weston hated perfect files.
Perfect files were usually fake.
At eleven that morning...
Mary asked one sentence that stopped everyone.
"Can Midnight come with us?"
Weston looked up from his coffee.
"No."
Mary lowered her head.
Normally...
that would have ended the conversation.
Instead Holly quietly spoke.
"He's lonely."
Thirty armed guards looked at her.
"You understand horses?" Weston asked.
"I understand loss."
Silence.
Weston studied her face.
She wasn't talking about the horse.
Against everyone's expectations...
Weston agreed.
For the first time in nearly three years...
Midnight walked calmly beside Mary's wheelchair.
Visitors stopped.
Employees stared.
Stable workers crossed themselves.
Finn O'Donnell nearly cried.
"I've trained horses for forty-seven years..."
"I've never seen anything like this."
Then everything exploded.
A black SUV crashed through the estate gates.
Gunfire erupted.
Windows shattered.
Mary screamed.
Weston's bodyguards fired back instantly.
Smoke covered the gardens.
Within seconds...
Holly had already moved.
Not away from danger.
Toward Mary.
She flipped the wheelchair behind a marble fountain...
covering the little girl with her own body.
Bullets struck the stone inches above them.
Weston noticed something impossible.
Holly wasn't panicking.
She was counting.
"...five..."
"...six..."
"...reload."
Exactly when she whispered "reload"...
three attackers changed magazines.
Weston's eyes narrowed.
Only trained professionals counted reload timing under fire.
Who exactly was his nanny?
One gunman reached the fountain.
Before anyone could shoot...
Holly stood.
One movement.
One elbow.
One twist.
The attacker collapsed unconscious.
His rifle never fired.
Weston's soldiers stared.
That wasn't luck.
That wasn't self-defense.
That was elite combat training.
The surviving attackers escaped.
Leaving behind only one wounded man.
When Weston questioned him...
the criminal laughed despite broken teeth.
"You think she's protecting your daughter?"
He coughed blood.
"No..."
"She's hiding from someone much worse than you."
Before anyone could ask another question...
a tiny capsule broke between his teeth.
Within seconds...
he was dead.
Poison.
Weston looked toward the mansion.
Holly sat beside Mary...
reading a fairy tale...
as though nothing had happened.
She had saved his daughter.
Again.
Yet somehow...
she had become the greatest mystery inside his empire.
That night...
Weston opened the attacker's jacket.
Inside was a burned leather patch.
A silver falcon...
surrounded by thirteen stars.
The moment Tristan saw it...
he whispered,
"Oh God..."
"What?"
"I thought they were extinct."
"Who?"
Tristan looked directly at his brother.
"The Black Falcon Riders."
"The organization that disappeared after murdering half of Europe's underworld..."
May you like
"...six years ago."
END OF CHAPTER 2
