Chapter 13 - The Sixty-Minute War
“Get the girls in the basement now!” I roared, grabbing Vince’s limp form and dragging him across the threshold before the timer hit fifty-nine minutes.
Grace didn't argue. She sprinted toward the kitchen, her voice sharp and urgent as she scooped Nora into her arms and ushered Olivia and Sophie down the hidden stairwell behind the pantry. The heavy steel bulkhead slammed shut with a hydraulic hiss, locking them in absolute, bomb-proof safety.
I laid Vince out on the Oriental rug in the grand foyer. His pulse was thready, erratic, but he was breathing.
“Boss...” Vince choked out, his eyes flickering open, blood crusting his lips. “The... the old man... Vince Moretti... he’s not in Attica. He never was. The feds traded him to the Outfit years ago as a deep-cover asset...”
“Save your breath,” I said, pulling a medical trauma kit from the console table and ripping open a pack of clotting gauze. “Who else was on the detail with you?”
“No one... they hit me outside the Astoria safehouse,” Vince whispered, gripping my wrist with terrifying strength. “They know about the mansion, Boss. They know about Grace. They’re not coming for your money... they’re coming to burn the bloodline down to the ash.”
The digital timer on Vince’s collar beeped. 54:12.
I didn't have time to cut the wired explosive manually without detonating the proximity charge. It was military-grade C4 rigged with a mercury tilt-switch. If I tilted the casing by a millimeter, the entire eastern wing of the mansion would be vaporized.
“Yuri!” I barked into my comms earpiece.
“Boss! I saw the perimeter feed go dark—” Yuri’s panicked voice crackled back. “A convoy of four unmarked vans just blew through the western security gate! They’ve got heavy ordnance, thermal optics, and signal jammers up—”
“Listen to me very carefully, Yuri,” I interrupted, my voice colder than ice. “Get to the master server. Open the automated defensive grid around the perimeter. Release the gas locks on the south greenhouse.”
“The greenhouse? Boss, that’s full of—!”
“Do it!” I shouted, pressing the tourniquet tighter around Vince’s leg. “And get yourself into the safehouse bunker with Grace and the girls. Do not let anyone out of that room unless you hear my voice giving the passcode.”
The front windows of the mansion shattered inward in a simultaneous, deafening cascade of glass and lead.
Automatic gunfire chewed through the antique wainscoting of the foyer, sending splinters of mahogany and plaster flying through the air.
I rolled behind the grand marble staircase, pulling the pin on a flash-bang grenade with my teeth, and hurled it through the shattered front entryway.
A blinding white flash shook the estate, followed by the agonizing screams of Moretti soldiers stumbling blindly into the foyer.
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I stepped out from behind the marble pillar, my MP5 barking a controlled, rhythmic three-round burst.
Two masked enforcers in tactical black gear dropped instantly, tumbling backward down the stone steps. But as they fell, three more poured through the shattered doorway, their submachine guns tracking directly toward my chest.
