Chapter 4 - THE ESCAPE FROM ROOFTOP 9
CRACK!
The center panel of the heavy oak door splintered inward. Through the gap, the dark uniforms of the city police tactical unit were visible, illuminated by the flashing red emergency lights.
"Police! Open the door immediately!" a amplified voice boomed from the hallway.
"Leonard bought off the local precinct commander," Alessandro growled, pulling a heavy silver pistol from an ankle holster beneath his trousers—a weapon Evelyn hadn't even noticed he was carrying. "He’s using real cops to do his dirty work."
"Fifty-five percent!" Evelyn shouted, her fingers flying across the keyboard, bypassing secondary firewalls to accelerate the upload speed. "Don't shoot them! If you shoot a cop, we’ll never get out of this country!"
"I don't intend to shoot them," Alessandro replied calmly. He walked to the suite's large floor-to-ceiling glass window, raised the weapon, and fired three precise shots into the corner of the heavy double-paned glass. The glass shattered with a loud explosion, blowing out into the freezing night air.
A gale-force wind swept into the room, sending loose paper, curtains, and dust swirling violently around them.
"Are you insane?!" Evelyn screamed, shielding her eyes from the sudden draft.
"Eighty percent!" she yelled, checking the progress bar on her laptop screen.
BOOM! The suite door gave way entirely. Three tactical officers rushed in with weapons drawn, yelling conflicting commands. "Drop your weapons! Hands on your heads!"
"Evelyn! Now!" Alessandro yelled.
"Done!" Evelyn slammed the laptop shut, ripped the flash drive out, and shoved it into her jumpsuit pocket.
Alessandro grabbed her by the waist, pulling her flush against his body, and leaped backward straight through the shattered window frame into the pitch-black void of the night air.
Evelyn’s heart stopped. She screamed, the rush of wind deafening, the lights of the city below spinning out of control.
They fell two full stories before a heavy, high-tensile steel cable yanked them sharply upward. Evelyn looked up through the darkness to see a sleek, matte-black stealth helicopter hovering silently just twenty feet above the hotel roofline, its winch cable locked onto a tactical harness hidden beneath Alessandro's suit jacket.
The wind roared around them as the winch pulled them up toward the open bay door of the aircraft. Down on the penthouse balcony below, officers fired uselessly into the sky, their gunshots swallowed by the noise of the night.
Two seconds later, heavy hands reached down from the helicopter bay and pulled Evelyn and Alessandro inside the warm, dimly lit cabin. The heavy door slid shut, silencing the storm outside.
Evelyn lay on the floor of the chopper, gasping for breath, her chest heaving violently. Alessandro unclipped the harness, knelt beside her, and offered her a bottle of water.
"Welcome aboard Valdieri Air," he said, not a single hair out of place. "Next stop, Geneva."
Evelyn sat up, pushing her hair out of her face. She looked at Alessandro, then down at the flash drive in her hand. " Geneva? I don't have a passport! It was in my room at the estate!"
Alessandro pulled a dark blue leather booklet from his pocket and tossed it onto her lap. She opened it. It was a diplomatic passport issued by the Republic of San Marino, complete with her photograph and the name Evelyn Valdieri.
Evelyn stared at the document in sheer disbelief. "What is this? This says I'm your wife!"
"It was the fastest way to grant you international diplomatic immunity from your father's extradition warrants," Alessandro said casually, taking a sip from a glass of scotch handed to him by his flight attendant. "Congratulations, Evelyn. You've been married for three hours."
Evelyn stood up, her blood boiling. "You forged a legal marriage document without my consent?!"
"I saved you from a private psychiatric prison where your father was planning to have you lobotomized or quietly eliminated," Alessandro countered, his eyes flashing with sudden, fierce intensity. "You are safe now because you carry my name. The Hartwells cannot touch a Valdieri."
Before Evelyn could fire back, the helicopter's onboard communications screen flickered to life. The screen displayed a live broadcast of a emergency news conference being held in the lobby of the hotel they had just fled.
Leonard Hartwell stood at the podium, flanked by Meredith and a weeping Sloane. But Leonard didn't look like a victorious businessman. He looked defeated, his face pale and sunken.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the press," Leonard stammered into the microphones, his voice trembling. "It is with deep regret that I announce... the immediate liquidation of Hartwell Global. As of twenty minutes ago, all corporate assets have been seized by the Swiss Banking Regulatory Commission due to... catastrophic financial irregularities."
Evelyn gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. It had actually worked.
On the screen, a journalist yelled out a question: "Mr. Hartwell! What about your daughter Evelyn? Reports say she was abducted by Alessandro Valdieri!"
Meredith pushed her husband aside and grabbed the microphone, her face twisted in absolute fury. "Evelyn is a thief! She stole fifty million dollars from this family and fled the country! She is dead to us! Do you hear me, Evelyn? You are dead to this family!"
Alessandro stepped forward and hit the mute button on the screen, plunging the cabin back into silence.
He turned to Evelyn, who was staring at the blank screen with tears spilling over her lashes—not tears of sadness, but of thirty years of suppressed rage finally breaking free.
"They think it's over," Evelyn whispered, her voice dropping into a register Alessandro had never heard from her before—cold, dark, and utterly ruthless. "They think losing their money is the worst thing that can happen to them."
Alessandro smiled—a slow, dangerous curve of his lips. "What do you have in mind, my dear wife?"
May you like
Evelyn held up the flash drive. "This drive doesn't just have the financial ledgers, Alessandro. It has the video files from the house security system. The files that prove who actually killed my older brother ten years ago."
Alessandro’s smile froze. His dark eyes locked onto hers with sudden, terrifying focus. "What did you say?"
