Chapter 7 - FIRE IN THE TOWER
(1,500 words)
The emergency alarms inside the penthouse didn't sound like a bell—they flared as silent, amber strobe lights across the concrete ceiling.
Adrian’s hand dropped from Genevieve’s jaw instantly. He pulled his semi-automatic from his belt holster in a single fluid motion, his eyes shifting toward the private elevator foyer.
"Marco!" Adrian barked into his shoulder mic.
"Boss! They're in the building!" Marco’s voice crackled through the comms, heavy gunfire echoing loudly behind his words. "They took out the basement security guards! They jammed the main elevator shafts and cut the primary power lines! They're coming up the service stairs!"
The floor beneath their feet shuddered slightly as a muffled explosion detonated four floors below.
Genevieve’s blue eyes went wide with sudden, terrifying memory. The smell of electrical smoke began to drift through the ventilation shafts.
"He's burning the building," she gasped, her hands trembling violently. "Just like Greenwich!"
"Listen to me!" Adrian shouted, grabbing her shoulders, forcing her to look directly into his face. "This isn't Greenwich! This building is a reinforced concrete bunker! The fire doors are steel! I have forty armed men between them and this floor!"
He pulled a small, silver 9mm handgun from his ankle holster and pressed it firmly into her hand.
"Do you know how to use this?" Adrian asked sharply.
Genevieve looked at the cold steel weapon. "My father taught me how to shoot target clay when I was fifteen."
"Point it at the door," Adrian commanded. "If anyone steps through that frame who isn't me or Marco, pull the trigger until it stops clicking."
Before she could answer, the reinforced steel doors of the service staircase at the end of the hallway buckled inward with a deafening CRASH.
Two men in heavy tactical gear broke through the smoke, holding automatic shotguns.
Adrian shoved Genevieve behind the concrete kitchen island, raised his weapon, and fired four rapid rounds into the lead attacker, sending him crashing back through the broken door frame.
The second attacker fired a heavy shotgun slug that shattered the glass chandelier above the dining table, sending heavy crystal shards raining down across the rug.
"Go! To the private panic room behind the study!" Adrian yelled, firing two more suppression rounds as Marco emerged from the secondary stairwell, his rifle barking furiously, laying down a wall of lead that pinned the remaining attackers in the hallway.
Genevieve didn't run to the panic room.
She crouched behind the concrete island, holding the silver pistol in both hands, her blue eyes locked onto the smoke-filled hallway.
Through the haze of drywall dust and gun smoke, a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a long leather coat stepped slowly through the broken security doors. He held a heavy magnum revolver in his right hand.
On his left hand, glowing sharply in the light of the emergency strobes, was a heavy silver ring shaped like a coiled snake.
Genevieve’s breath left her lungs in a sharp, painful gasp.
It was him. The man from her father's library.
"Kane!" the man roared, his deep, gravelly voice echoing through the ruined living room. "Where is the girl?! Give her to me and I'll let you walk out of this burning pile!"
Adrian stepped out from behind a concrete pillar, his dark face covered in soot, his gun leveled directly at the man's chest.
"You're thirty minutes early for the gala, Moretti," Adrian said coldly.
Dominic Moretti raised a cruel, yellowed smile. "I don't like waiting for court sign-offs, Adrian. I prefer finishing my business in private."
Moretti raised his magnum revolver toward Adrian's head.
BANG!
A sharp, deafening gunshot echoed from the kitchen island.
Moretti’s right shoulder jerked backward as a blood stain blossomed across his leather coat. He let out a harsh roar of pain, dropping his heavy revolver onto the marble floor.
He turned his head in shock toward the kitchen island.
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Genevieve stood up slowly from behind the concrete counter. Her arms were extended, her hands steady, the silver 9mm pointed directly between Moretti's yellowed eyes.
"You dropped your ring in Greenwich ten years ago," Genevieve declared, her voice cold, hard, and devoid of fear. "You won't drop it tonight."
