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The silence in the VIP wing of Manhattan General wasn't just quiet; it was suffocating. / Chapter 2 / 6

Chapter 2 - The Three-Year-Old Target

"Get down!" Marco shouted, drawing his weapon and throwing his body over Dante.

Mara didn't think. She grabbed the metal crash cart, slamming it against the doorway to block the line of sight from the opposite rooftop. Alarms blared throughout the hospital. Red emergency lights bathed the room in a bloody glow.

In the chaos, Vivienne was dragged out by her personal security team, her screams of fury lost in the mechanical wailing of the sirens.

"Mara!" Dante roared, pushing Marco off him despite the fresh blood seeping through his abdominal bandages. He ripped the telemetry wires from his chest. "Where is Leo?!"

"He's safe! He's with my sister in Queens!" Mara cried out, ducking as another bullet punched through the drywall.

"He's not safe," Dante snarled, forcing himself out of the bed. His legs buckled, but he caught himself on the bedside table. His face was pale, sweat pouring down his forehead, but his eyes burned with the primal fury of a father. "Vivienne didn't come here to check on me. She came to confirm my death. If she knows about you, she knows about the boy. Marco! The armored SUV. Now!"

Ten minutes later, they were tearing through the rain-slicked streets of New York. Mara was in the backseat, frantically pressing a sterile gauze pad against Dante’s reopening stitches. He didn't even flinch at the pain. He was staring at a live feed on his phone—the security cameras around Mara’s small apartment in Queens.

The screen suddenly went black.

"They cut the power," Mara whispered, her face losing all color. "Dante, please. He thinks I'm just at work. He thinks I'm coming home with ice cream."

"Drive faster," Dante ordered the driver, his voice dangerously calm. He turned to Mara, his blood-stained hand cupping her cheek. "I swore I would stay away from you both until the commission was dead. I failed you."

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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...

"We don't have time for regrets," Mara said, leaning into his touch for a fraction of a second before pulling away to check his pulse. "If Vivienne’s father, Victor Armand, has Leo... he won't use him as a bargaining chip. He will eliminate the Bellaro bloodline entirely."

The SUV violently swerved as a black pickup truck rammed into their side. Glass shattered. The smell of burning rubber and gunpowder filled the air. They hadn't even reached Queens, and the war was already at their doorstep.

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