Chapter 5 - The Trojan Horse
Dante didn't use the door—he vaulted over his mahogany desk with terrifying athletic speed, drawing his Sig Sauer before his feet even hit the floor. Norah dropped her sewing tin and ran right behind him, her bare feet flying across the marble hallway.
When they burst into the master suite, the room was empty.
The balcony doors, reinforced with two-inch bulletproof glass, were blown wide open, the steel frames twisted inward as if hit by a hydraulic charge. A fierce, howling wind from the storm outside whipped the silk curtains into a frenzy.
In the center of the devastated room stood Mrs. Gable, bound tightly to a steel chair with industrial zip-ties, a gag stuffed ruthlessly into her mouth. Her eyes were wide with blind terror.
Dante ripped the gag from her mouth. “Where is she?!”
“The... the nanny,” Mrs. Gable gasped, coughing violently. “Sarah... she brought up the mid-day vitamin supplements. She said... she said Mr. Vance ordered them administered early. She drugged my tea... and when I woke up, the balcony door was blown and...”
Dante didn't wait to hear the rest. He sprinted out onto the glass-strewn balcony, looking down at the street below.
Parked thirty stories down was a black decoy van speeding away from the curb, flanked by two motorcycles.
“They used an EMP charge on the smart-glass sensors,” Dante snarled into his encrypted sleeve mic, his voice echoing with demonic fury. “All units, code red! Lock down the bridges, the tunnels, every airspace out of Manhattan! If Viktor leaves this island with my daughter, burn the city to the ground!”
Norah stepped out onto the balcony, the wind whipping her hair across her face. She looked down at the chaotic street below, then at the shattered balcony lock.
“They didn't just take her for ransom,” Norah said calmly, her voice cutting through Dante’s rage like a scalpel.
Dante turned to her, his pale eyes blazing. “What did you say?”
“Think about it,” Norah stepped closer, pointing at the shattered security grid. “If Viktor wanted to kill Chloe last night, his hit squad could have sprayed the laundry room with automatic fire. They didn't. They chased her out into the street. They wanted her isolated.”
“Because they knew I would hide her in the one place I trust,” Dante realized, horror dawning in his eyes. “My own home.”
“And who had access to your security schedules, your private wing, and your domestic staff?” Norah finished for him. “Arthur was just a pawn. Sarah the nanny was planted months ago. They didn't just want Chloe back—they wanted to draw you out of your fortress by taking the only person who made your daughter speak.”
Dante grabbed Norah by the shoulders, his grip bruisingly tight. “Where would Viktor take her? He knows my enforcers are hunting every safehouse from here to Montauk.”
Norah looked down at her sewing tin, which she had clutched instinctively when she ran out of the study. A glint of silver caught her eye—the small, specialized tracking needle she used to mark custom luxury coats for VIP clients who demanded absolute discretion.
“When I was mending that Italian wool coat yesterday,” Norah said slowly, pulling a tiny, high-frequency GPS microchip out from her apron pocket, “the initials inside were D.B. But the owner never picked it up. One of your top lieutenants dropped it off for emergency repairs two days ago.”
May you like
Dante’s breath caught. “Marcus.”
“Marcus was wearing that exact coat when he escorted you into the laundry last night,” Norah whispered. “He wasn't investigating the scene, Dante. He was checking to see if the coat—and the tracker inside it—was still on the table.”
