flash
The silence in the grand living room felt heavier than the mahogany beams holding up the ceiling. My eyes remained open, burning with unaccustomed moisture, reflecting the amber glow of the hearth. Sofia stood frozen two feet away from my armchair, her small fingers still curled into the edge of the cashmere blanket she had just draped over my chest. / Chapter 4 / 20

Chapter 4 - Darkness and BloodThe living room erupted into chaos the moment the lights died.

In total darkness, my world wasn't a handicap; it was an advantage. I had memorized every square inch of my estate down to the grain of the floorboards. Tucking Sofia tightly against my chest, I dropped into a combat roll behind the heavy mahogany dining table just as a volley of automatic gunfire chewed through the air where I had been standing a second before.

"Suppressing fire! Sweep the room!" Viktor screamed in the dark, his voice echoing off the stone walls.

"Maria! Stay down and crawl toward the eastern panic room!" I ordered, my voice cutting through the din of shattering glass and ricocheting bullets.

"I won't leave you!" Maria yelled back, her form a dark silhouette as she scrambled across the floor toward us.

"Move!" I barked, drawing a flash-bang grenade from my tactical belt with my free hand, pulling the pin with my teeth, and tossing it blindly toward the center of the room.

BOOM.

A blinding white flash and a concussive shockwave rattled the windows, followed by the agonizing screams of Viktor’s mercenaries as their night-vision goggles short-circuited, blinding them instantly.

I didn't hesitate. Rising from behind the table, I fired three controlled shots into the muzzle flashes erupting near the doorway. Two men dropped instantly. The third ducked back into the hallway, cursing in Russian.

"Daniel!" Viktor’s voice rang out, laced with manic fury from somewhere near the grand staircase. "You can't protect them forever! Thomas is already dead! You're bleeding out for a ghost!"

"I don't protect ghosts, Viktor!" I shouted back, stepping backward while keeping Sofia shielded. "I bury them!"

I grabbed Maria by the arm, hauling her up from the floor. "The kitchen dumbwaiter. It leads down to the reinforced drainage tunnels. Go. Now."

"What about you?" Maria gasped, blood smeared across her cheek from a flying splinter of wood.

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The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure terminal on my desk flashed a violent crimson. I hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, my eyes burning from staring at columns of ghost figures, duplicate invoices, and shell corporations linked to Dominic Rossi. But the red alert wasn’t from Rossi’s faction. It was an internal security flag originating from the estate’s main vault deep beneath the west wing.

The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure ter...

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scattering the light from the chandeliers. The muffled laughter died instantly, replaced by a suffocating, heavy silence that crept outward from the grand staircase.

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scatter...

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking out the clinical, terrifying silence of the kitchen. Evelyn Crane stood stiffly in front of my mahogany desk, her hands folded over her apron with the rigid precision of someone who had spent decades micromanaging every square inch of my estate. Behind her, Norah hovered near the doorway, clutching her clipboard like a shield.

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking...

"I'm going to finish a conversation with an old friend," I said coldly, handing her my secondary backup Glock and a spare magazine. "If I'm not out in ten minutes, lock the steel bulkhead from the inside and don't look back."

Without waiting for an answer, I pushed them both toward the service hallway, turning back into the smoke-filled drawing room to face the rest of Viktor’s army alone.

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