Chapter 6 - The Infiltration
The peace of Lake Shore Drive did not last through the night.
At 3:14 a.m., the building’s primary environmental controls did not fail with an alarm; they died with a sudden, sickening drop in ambient air pressure that woke me from a dead sleep.
The quiet hum of the climate-control vents cut out.
The soft, warm amber glow of the terrace lanterns vanished, plunging the fifty-foot bedroom into pitch-black darkness, broken only by the distant, pale sweep of the maritime lighthouse across the ceiling plaster.
I sat bolt upright in the bed, the down comforter falling to my waist, every muscle in my body seizing into absolute, cold terror.
The power.
In the house on Astor Street, Derek had always killed the main breakers before he came down the hall. He liked the dark. He liked the sound of my breath catching in the corner of the room while his boots moved over the hardwood.
A floorboard creaked outside the master suite.
Not the deliberate, heavy stride of Alexander Moretti.
This was a light, hurried scuffle—the sound of rubber-soled combat boots moving with tactical speed across the parquet gallery.
I slipped out of the bed, my bare feet making no sound against the cold floorboards, my left hand reaching instinctively for the heavy bronze table lamp on the nightstand. My right wrist, secured in its neoprene brace, throbbed with a sudden, vicious spike of adrenaline.
The bedroom door didn't swing open.
It exploded inward in a shower of splintered mahogany and shearing brass.
Two men dressed in non-reflective black tactical gear, their faces hidden behind ballistic balaclavas, lunged through the dust. The lead operator had an eighteen-inch tactical pry-bar raised in his right hand, his left reaching for my throat.
"Secure the target!" a voice hissed through a throat mic. "Do not engage the torso—Carter wants her conscious for the notary!"
I didn't scream.
Three years of terror had emptied my lungs of useless noise.
I swung the heavy bronze lamp with the full, desperate leverage of my left arm, aiming straight for the center of the lead man’s visor.
The heavy metal base struck the tempered polycarbonate with a sickening, explosive crack.
The operator staggered backward, his hands flying to his shattered faceplate, blood spraying from his broken nose across the white linen of the bed.
Before the second man could raise his weapon, the room went white.
A deafening, unsuppressed gunshot tore through the ceiling rafters with the force of an artillery shell.
BOOM.
The second operator’s head snapped backward as an armor-piercing round punched clean through his Kevlar helmet, lifting his two-hundred-pound frame off his feet and slamming him into the doorframe before his body collapsed into an unmoving heap of black nylon.
Alexander Moretti stepped through the ruined threshold.
He was bare-chested, wearing only a pair of dark tactical trousers, his pale skin marked by three jagged shrapnel scars across his ribs, a customized Benelli M4 tactical shotgun tucked tight against his shoulder.
His eyes were completely black in the muzzle flare, dilated with an ancient, terrifying fury that seemed to fill the entire fifty-foot suite.
Behind him came Dante, moving with the cold, mechanical efficiency of an industrial slaughterhouse, a suppressed submachine gun chattering twice in the darkness of the hallway.
Thwip. Thwip.
A third body hit the parquet outside with a wet, heavy thud.
Alexander didn't look at the dead men on the floor. He lowered the shotgun with one hand, crossing the twenty feet of silk rug in two massive strides, his free arm sweeping around my waist, pulling me hard against the heat of his bare chest.
"Did they touch you?" he roared, his voice shaking the glass windows overlooking the lake.
"No," I gasped, my hands clutching his bare shoulders, my fingers digging into the hard, knotted muscle of his back. "No, I hit the first one with the lamp."
Alexander looked down at the bleeding operator groaning on the floor, then down at the shattered bronze lamp at my feet.
A terrifying, feral pride flared in his pale blue eyes.
"Good girl," he whispered, his chest heaving against mine, his pulse hammering against my cheek like an engine running without oil.
Dante stepped into the room, kicking the groaning operator’s weapon into the corner, his boots crunching on the broken mahogany.
"Building security was breached through the service basement, Boss," Dante reported, his voice flat as slate. "They cut the fiber lines at the street level. Eight operators. All carrying private contract credentials from an offshore security firm out of Delaware."
"Who paid the retainer, Dante?" Alexander asked, his voice dropping into that low, lethal whisper that preceded a massacre.
Dante pulled a water-damaged manifest from the dead operator's chest rig.
"Carter & Sterling," Dante said. "Authorized by Derek Carter from his hospital bed at Northwestern forty minutes ago. The notary was waiting in a van on the corner of Michigan Avenue."
Alexander slowly released his grip on my waist, though his hand stayed anchored to the small of my back, holding me steady against his hip.
He looked down at the bleeding contractor crawling across the floorboards.
"Pick him up," Alexander commanded.
"Boss?"
"Pick him up," Alexander repeated. "Put him in the back of the van with the notary. Drive them to the Palmer House Hotel. Tell the banquet manager to set forty chairs in the grand ballroom for eleven o'clock."
May you like
He turned to look at me, his gaze dropping to the white cashmere trousers that were now speckled with flecks of fresh arterial blood.
"Get dressed, Emily," Alexander murmured, his fingers gently brushing a speck of plaster dust from my temple. "We have a shareholders' meeting to attend."
