Chapter 4 - THE 11-MINUTE WINDOWTen minutes earlier, outside the western perimeter wall, a figure in a black tactical vest slipped through the iron gate with the practiced ease of a ghost.
This was Viktor Vance—Marcus’s younger brother and an elite executioner for the Vanguard Syndicate. For weeks, they had mapped every blind spot on the estate. They knew that at precisely 12:14 AM, the rotating security patrol left a crucial eleven-minute window where the thermal cameras pointed toward the lake, leaving the western rose garden completely blind.
Viktor checked his comm-link.
“Marcus, I’m inside the garden. Status?”
“The boss knows,” Marcus’s voice hissed through the earpiece, strained and breathless. “He caught me. Get the girl and burn the estate down. Leave nothing.”
Viktor smirked, pulling a silenced submachine gun from his sling. He crept toward the French doors of the ground-floor library, which connected directly to the guest wing hallway. With a small glass-cutter tool, he scored a circle around the brass handle, tapped it lightly with a rubber mallet, and the glass disc fell inward with barely a whisper of sound.
He stepped inside the dark library.
And immediately stopped.
Sitting cross-legged on the Persian rug in the center of the room, completely unafraid, was three-year-old Ellie. She was holding a half-eaten gingerbread cookie she must have smuggled from the kitchen, staring directly at him with large, curious eyes.
“You’re not the gardener,” Ellie observed calmly, tilting her head. “You have a ugly coat.”
Viktor stared at the child, a cold, predatory grin spreading across his face. He lowered his weapon slightly, stepping closer. “Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. You’ve got your father’s eyes, little girl—wait, your father was a firefighter, wasn't he? Too bad he burned up before he could teach you how to run.”
Ellie’s lower lip quivered slightly at the mention of her father, but before Viktor could grab her arm, a tiny voice echoed from behind a mahogany bookshelf.
“Leave her alone, bad man!”
Viktor whipped around, raising his gun—just as a heavy brass paperweight struck him squarely in the shins with surprising force. Hannah Reed, pale, sweating, and shaking from her high fever, lunged forward like a mother tigress, swinging a heavy bronze statue toward his head.
Viktor grunted in pain, sidestepping the blow, and backhanded Hannah across the face with the butt of his weapon. Hannah collapsed against the bookshelf, blood trickling from her lip as consciousness slipped away.
“Mama!” Ellie screamed, scrambling toward her.
Viktor grabbed Ellie by the collar of her dress, lifting her off the ground effortlessly. “Come along, little mouse. The boss wants to see what a three-year-old’s drawing looks like in real life.”
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Before he could reach the window, the library doors flew off their hinges with a deafening crash.
Damian Cross stood in the doorway, his eyes burning with a murderous rage that made the devil himself look tame.
