Chapter 8 - The Breach of Trust
The dashboard of the Aston Martin flashed red as Dante gunned the engine across the floating bridge at ninety-five miles per hour.
Wipers swept frantically against the blinding downpour, throwing arcs of spray into the black night as we tore toward Lake Sammamish.
Three minutes earlier, while I was walking out of the Rainier Club, Dante’s tactical tablet had triggered a Silent Priority One alarm.
The outer thermal sensors on the northern perimeter of the Sammamish estate had been tripped.
Not by an animal, not by falling snow, but by three synchronized electronic bypass signals that required internal security codes to execute.
Someone hadn't just attacked the fortress; someone who knew our internal cryptographic keys had unlocked the gate from the inside.
My heart pounded with a terrifying, suffocating violence that made the blood roar in my ears.
Emily and Noah were inside that house, protected only by Dr. Alvarez and four residential guards.
“Dante, who had access to the northern perimeter bypass codes?” I roared over the howling engine, my knuckles white against the dash.
Dante’s face was pale, his jaw set in a rigid line of agonizing guilt as his fingers flew across his diagnostic screen.
“Only three people carried those codes, Boss,” Dante answered, his voice cracking with an emotion I had never heard from him before: fear.
“You, me… and Marcus Cole.”
Marcus Cole.
My head of residential security, a man who had served in my father’s inner guard for fifteen years, a man I had personally entrusted with the lives of my family.
“Call the residence! Put me through to the master suite now!” I bellowed.
Dante hit the emergency intercom link.
The speakers in the car hissed with static, followed by the dull, rhythmic crack of gunfire echoing through the high ceilings of the house.
Pop. Pop-pop-pop.
Then Emily’s voice came through the receiver, breathless, ragged with pure hysteria, drowned out by the wail of my screaming son.
“GAVIN! GAVIN, THEY’RE IN THE HOUSE!”
“Emily! Where are you?” I shouted into the hands-free receiver, leaning forward against the windshield as if my will alone could push the car faster.
“We’re in the panic room behind the library!” she sobbed, Noah’s piercing cries tearing through the audio feed.
“Dr. Alvarez… oh God, Gavin, Marcus shot Dr. Alvarez in the hallway! She’s bleeding on the carpet!”
“Marcus is outside the blast door with two men… he’s running a thermal drill against the electronic lock!”
A cold, homicidal darkness descended over my vision, narrowing the world down to a single, singular objective: slaughter.
“Emily, listen to my voice,” I said, forcing my tone into an unnaturally steady, commanding frequency.
“The panic room door has a secondary manual deadbolt at the bottom of the frame, three inches from the floor.”
“Slide it into place right now. It is mechanical; their drill cannot bypass it.”
Over the audio feed, I heard the heavy, metallic clank of the secondary steel deadbolt engaging, followed by the muffled, angry curses of Marcus Cole through the steel door.
“We are four minutes away, Emily,” I told her, checking the chamber of my Kimber and grabbing an automatic combat shotgun from the locking rack beneath my seat.
“Hold our son. Close your eyes. I am coming.”
Dante cut the headlights as we turned off the main highway onto the private forest road, relying entirely on night-vision optics to navigate the winding turns.
The outer iron gate of the compound was hanging wide open, its hydraulic control box pried open and fried with a portable circuit breaker.
We blasted through the entrance, gravel and snow spraying beneath our four-wheel drive, skidding to a halt directly outside the main glass portico.
The residential security guards assigned to the courtyard were lying motionless in the snow, taken down by close-range suppressed shots from behind.
A cold-blooded execution orchestrated by someone they knew and trusted.
I kicked my door open before the vehicle had even completely stopped, racking a three-inch magnum slug into the chamber of the Benelli shotgun.
Dante was right behind me, his submachine gun drawn, his face twisted in an expression of murderous betrayal.
We cleared the shattered glass entrance in a sprint, entering the cavernous main living hall where the pine wreath still hung above the cold fireplace.
Dr. Elena Alvarez was lying near the grand staircase, clutching a towel to her abdomen, her face as gray as ash, but her eyes were still open.
Dante immediately dropped to one knee beside her, applying direct pressure to the wound with a combat gauze pack from his vest.
“Marcus… and two Chicago contract hitters…” Elena gasped, spitting blood onto her collar.
“They… they want the baby… Marcus said Matteo Russo paid him five million to deliver the Moretti heir…”
My blood turned to pure acid.
Matteo Russo.
The meeting at the Rainier Club had been a diversion, a theatrical performance designed to pull me out of my fortress while his paid traitor inside stole my son.
Matteo never intended to let me walk away with thirty-five percent of the docks.
He intended to take the docks and take the boy, ensuring that Gavin Moretti would remain Chicago’s obedient dog for the rest of his life.
“Dante, keep her alive,” I whispered, stepping over the pool of blood and advancing toward the grand staircase with deliberate, silent footfalls.
“Boss… leave Marcus to me,” Dante begged, his eyes burning with personal betrayal.
“He’s my responsibility.”
“Marcus is already dead, Dante,” I replied coldly.
“He just hasn't stopped breathing yet.”
I moved up the marble steps with the fluid grace of a ghost, the heavy shotgun resting across my chest, tracking the shadows of the upper mezzanine.
The high-pitched whine of a high-temperature industrial drill echoed down the gallery from the private library.
I rounded the corner of the hallway, keeping my back to the oak-paneled wall, peering into the open library double doors.
Two men in tactical gear were standing guard near the bookshelf, while Marcus Cole—a man who had eaten dinner at my table for a decade—was operating the drill against the panic room’s electronic keypad.
“Hurry the hell up, Marcus!” one of the hired mercenaries hissed, checking his watch.
“Moretti will be back from the Rainier Club any minute!”
“Relax,” Marcus barked, sweat pouring down his graying temples.
“Matteo’s crew was supposed to keep Gavin occupied for at least another hour. We have plenty of—”
Marcus never finished his sentence.
I stepped into the library archway and pulled the trigger of the Benelli.
BOOM.
The concussive blast of the twelve-gauge slug tore through the chest of the first mercenary, lifting him off his feet and throwing him backward through an antique display case in an explosion of mahogany and glass.
The second mercenary panicked, spinning his rifle toward the door, but I racked the slide with violent speed and fired a second shell.
The heavy buckshot struck him squarely in the upper torso, dropping him instantly onto the Persian rug in a motionless heap.
Marcus Cole dropped the smoking industrial drill, falling back against the reinforced steel door of the panic room, his face draining of all color.
His service pistol was in his holster, but his trembling hands froze at his sides as he stared into the smoking barrel of my shotgun.
“Gavin…” Marcus stammered, his knees buckling until he slid down the steel door into a seated position.
“Gavin, please… listen to me… they had my daughter… Matteo has my family in Chicago…”
I lowered the shotgun, resting the butt against the floorboards, and stepped forward until the shadow of my towering frame completely engulfed him.
“You watched my father bleed out in the street, Marcus,” I said, my voice eerily quiet, carrying the unbearable weight of an executioner’s decree.
“You watched me grow up. You swore an oath on the cross to protect my blood.”
“Gavin, they were going to kill my girl!” he wept, tears streaming down his weathered cheeks.
“Matteo gave me no choice!”
“There is always a choice, Marcus,” I said softly, pulling the Kimber .45 from my belt and pressing the cold muzzle against his forehead.
“You could have come to me. You could have told your Don. We would have brought fifty men to Chicago and torn that city apart to save your child.”
“Instead, you chose to sell mine.”
Marcus looked up into my emerald eyes, seeing only the icy, absolute void of death waiting for him.
He stopped crying. He closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Gavin,” he whispered.
“I know,” I replied.
I squeezed the trigger.
The muffled crack echoed through the library, and Marcus Cole’s body slumped sideways against the bloody steel door.
I stepped back, holstering my sidearm, wiping a stray drop of blood from my forehead with the back of my sleeve.
I took two slow, deep breaths, letting the animal rage subside until only the trembling father remained beneath the armor.
I tapped gently on the steel panel with my knuckles, three measured, familiar beats.
May you like
“Emily,” I called out softly.
“It’s Gavin. Open the door.”
