Chapter 7 - The Trap is Set
By 9:00 PM, the estate looked completely normal from the outside. The exterior lights glowed softly against the cobblestone driveway, the rosebushes rustled in the cool night breeze, and the security gates hummed with standard operational frequency.
Inside, however, the house was a ghost town.
All civilian staff had been sent home with double pay and strict nondisclosure orders. The only people remaining inside the sprawling mansion were myself, Grace, and four of my most trusted operatives stationed in the blind spots of the security grid.
Sophie and Caleb were tucked safely inside the reinforced panic room behind my study—a high-tech sanctuary stocked with weeks of food, water, and entertainment. Before the heavy steel door sealed shut, Sophie had looked up at me with those big, careful eyes and whispered, "You're going to win, right, Daddy?"
"Always," I had told her, kissing her forehead.
Now, I sat at my mahogany desk in the dark study, the desk lamp casting a single harsh circle of light over an open file folder containing the fake vault codes. Beside the folder rested my Sig Sauer, its metal slide gleaming dully in the shadows.
The heavy iron gates at the end of the driveway didn't break. They didn't need to.
At 11:14 PM, the security monitors flickered. A single black sedan rolled silently up the private drive, its headlights off, gliding over the gravel without crunching a single stone. Four figures stepped out of the vehicle, draped in tactical black, moving with the synchronized precision of professional killers.
Moretti’s men.
I watched them on the quad-split monitor feed from my desk. They didn't try the front door. They headed straight for the side service entrance—the exact entrance Grace used when she brought in groceries.
The door equipped with the silent alarm.
Bzzzt.
The faint vibration pulsed through my phone.
"They're in," Grace's voice whispered through my ear-piece from the second-floor control hub. "They’re moving through the pantry toward the main corridor."
"Let them come," I murmured, leaning back in my leather chair, my hand resting lightly on the grip of my pistol. "Don't engage until they cross the threshold of the study."
"Copy that."
The heavy oak doors of the study remained locked from the inside, but in the world of professional operators, locks were merely suggestions. A sharp, muffled pop echoed down the hallway as a breaching charge blew the deadbolt clean out of the wood frame.
The door swung inward with a heavy thud.
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Three men in tactical gear poured into the room, assault rifles raised, scanning the dark corners for targets.
They didn't see me sitting directly beneath the desk lamp until it was too late.
