Chapter 17 - The Calm After the Siege
By 3:00 AM, the estate was secure.
The local police—acting on my pre-arranged anonymous tips regarding a violent cartel intrusion—arrived to find the grounds cleared, the bodies secured, and the federal jurisdiction forms already signed by my attorneys. To the authorities, it was a localized shootout between rival international criminal elements trying to settle an old score.
The media would call it a cartel war on the outskirts of Connecticut.
To my children, it was just a few loud noises in the night.
I walked down the hallway of the east wing, my tactical vest unbuckled and slung over my shoulder, and knocked softly three times on the reinforced steel door of the panic room.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
A second later, the heavy hydraulic locks hissed open, and the steel door swung inward.
Grace stood in the doorway, holding a flashlight in one hand and a heavy iron fireplace poker in the other. Her eyes scanned the hallway quickly, assessing my posture, before she let out a long, shuddering breath.
"Is it over?" she asked quietly.
"It's over," I said, offering a tired, reassuring nod.
Behind Grace, Sophie and Caleb were curled up together on a cot wrapped in wool blankets. Caleb was fast asleep, clutching his blue-stitched rabbit tightly to his chest. Sophie rubbed her eyes, looking up at me as I stepped into the sanctuary.
"Daddy?" she whispered, her voice thick with sleep. "Did the bad noises stop?"
I walked over to the cot, dropping to my knees, and scooped her up into my arms, burying my face in her dark-blond hair.
"They stopped, baby," I murmured, holding her tightly against my chest. "They're never coming back. I promise."
Sophie wrapped her small arms around my neck, resting her head against my shoulder. For the first time in weeks, she didn't flinch. She didn't check the corners of the room. She just breathed out a soft, peaceful sigh and fell asleep in my arms.
Grace watched us from the doorway, her expression softening into something warm and deeply protective.
"You're bleeding," she said quietly, pointing toward a shallow graze along my left forearm where a bullet had clipped my sleeve during the shootout.
May you like
I looked down at the torn fabric and the small streak of crimson. "It's nothing."
"Sit down," Grace commanded softly, stepping away and returning a moment later with a medical kit from the panic room shelf. "Even mafia bosses need someone to patch them up."
