The Ghost of Elmhurst: How Adrian Moretti Discovered His Six-Year-Old Secret Daughter on a Rainy Tuesday Night and Shattered the Syndicate to Keep Her Safe

The courtyard was a nightmare of smoke, fire, and shattering stone.

Shreds of expensive masonry rained down from the grand portico as Vane’s men maintained a relentless suppressing fire against the main house.

I scrambled across the open pavement, dragging a wounded enforcer behind the shelter of a stone fountain, tearing open his tactical vest to inspect a shrapnel wound to his abdomen.

"Hold this gauze down hard!" I ordered the conscious guard, pressing his hands against his bleeding stomach before looking up into the swirling smoke.

Ten yards away, Adrian was kneeling behind an overturned armored vehicle, firing methodically into the advancing ranks of Vane’s enforcers, his face smeared with soot and blood.

Suddenly, a heavy armored transport van smashed through the courtyard gates, driving directly toward the fountain where I was treating the wounded man.

On the roof of the van stood a tall, scarred man holding a heavy-caliber rocket launcher, leveling the crosshairs straight at the position where Adrian was pinned.

Marcus Vane.

My heart stopped. He was aiming right at Adrian’s back.

"Adrian! Look out!" I screamed over the roar of the gunfire.

Adrian spun around instantly, raising his weapon, but Vane was already pulling the trigger.

A white trail of smoke hissed from the launcher tube.

Without thinking, without calculating the odds of my own survival, I lunged forward, throwing my body across the open pavement.

BOOM!

The rocket slammed into the stone fountain just five feet away from where I threw myself down.

The concussive blast threw me violently through the air, sending me crashing hard against the courtyard flagstones.

Pain exploded across my ribs and shoulder, hot and blinding, before the world dissolved into a blurry, spinning haze of white smoke and silence.

"Sophia!"

A roar of pure, unadulterated agony cut through the ringing in my ears.

Footsteps pounded across the pavement. Strong hands grabbed me, hauling my limp body against a warm, trembling chest.

"Sophia, open your eyes! Look at me!" Adrian’s voice cracked, sounding more terrified than I had ever heard it in his life.

I forced my eyelids to flutter open.

Adrian’s soot-stained face hovered above me, his gray-green eyes wide with absolute terror, tears cutting clean paths through the grime on his cheeks.

"I'm… I'm okay," I whispered, coughing weakly as a sharp pain flared in my ribs. "Just… just got the wind knocked out of me."

A dark shadow fell across us.