Chapter 2 - THE SIEGE OF FORTRESS MORETTI
The heavy oak front doors split open down the middle under the force of a breaching charge. The explosion rattled the crystal chandelier hanging above the dining room, sending sharp glass droplets cascading onto the mahogany table.
"Get them into the safe room!" I barked at Elena, stepping back from the window as a spray of automatic rifle fire blew through the glass panes, shredding the velvet drapes to ribbons.
Elena didn't argue. She pulled a brass key from her apron pocket, reached under the mahogany table's central pedestal, and twisted a hidden lock mechanism built into the floorboards. A heavy steel trapdoor popped open with a quiet hiss of hydraulic pressure.
"In! Quickly, my little birds, down the stairs!" Elena urged the four identical boys. They didn't cry. They didn't scream. They moved with a terrifying, practiced efficiency that told me this wasn't the first time they had been trained to hide from monsters.
I turned away from the table, racking the slide of my Sig Sauer, and moved out into the second-floor gallery overlooking the main foyer.
Below, six tactical operators clad in unmarked black armor were pushing through the smoking ruined doorway. My two foyer security guards were already down, blood pooling on the white marble floor. These weren't street thugs or rival Chicago mobsters; their movement was clean, silent, and military.
"Moretti’s alive! Upper deck!" one of the attackers shouted in a harsh, accented voice.
I leaned over the marble balustrade, firing three rapid shots. The heavy hollow-point rounds shattered the front visor of the lead tactical operator, dropping him instantly into the marble fountain. The remaining five scattered behind the foyer columns, returning fire with suppressed submachine guns.
Plaster and dust exploded around me. I ducked low, my heart hammering against my ribs not out of fear for my own life, but out of a wild, surging fury that had been dormant for five years.
My sons were under my roof. My dead wife had lied to me. My home was under assault by a black-ops hit squad.
I pulled a small black remote from my inner breast pocket and slammed the red button.
Heavy iron security shutters slammed down over every window and doorway on the upper floor, plunging the mansion into an eerie, emergency-lit crimson glow. The deafening roar of tactical sirens began to blare throughout the house.
I retreated back into the dining room. Elena was just closing the hidden trapdoor behind the last little boy—the one who had held the photograph.
"Alejandro!" she gasped, her face covered in plaster dust.
I grabbed her by the shoulder, hauling her up. "Where does that passage lead?"
"It connects to the old coal cellar beneath the carriage house," she stammered, wringing her hands. "Sofia had it reinforced three years before she... before she passed."
"Who knew about those boys, Elena? Name them!" I yelled over the blare of the security sirens and the muffled thud of explosives coming from the lower floor. They were setting charges on the internal stairwell doors.
"Nobody!" Elena wept. "Only Sofia, me, and Dr. Vance!"
I froze. "Julian Vance? My personal physician?"
"He delivered them!" Elena confessed, the tears pouring down her cheeks. "It was quadruplets, Alejandro! Sofia was terrified. Two weeks before she gave birth, she overheard a phone call between your late uncle Marco and someone high up in the syndicate. They were planning to eliminate any direct heirs to your estate so the Moretti empire would fall to the commission when you died!"
A cold realization settled in my stomach. Five years ago, my uncle Marco had tried to orchestrate a internal coup, which had resulted in his 'unfortunate' car accident in lake Michigan. I thought I had wiped out his entire faction. I was wrong.
"Sofia faked her own death?" I asked, the words feeling heavy and toxic on my tongue.
"No!" Elena cried out. "She was sick, Alejandro! The pregnancy was too hard on her heart. Dr. Vance helped her hide the babies in a secure farmhouse in Wisconsin right after they were born. Sofia died three weeks later from heart failure... but she spent her final days making sure those four boys were erased from every public record, hospital log, and birth registry!"
"Then why bring them here?" I demanded, pointing a finger toward the floor. "Why bring four identical targets into the middle of my house?"
"Because Dr. Vance was murdered three days ago in his office!" Elena screamed above the noise of a massive explosion downstairs. The floor beneath us shook violently. "Someone found his private files! I knew they were coming for the boys next, so I brought them to the only place on earth with reinforced steel walls!"
The iron doors leading to the dining room began to buckle under a thermal cutting torch. Bright orange sparks rained down onto the carpet.
They were in the house.
I looked at the floor trapdoor, then at the burning door.
"Get down the passage," I commanded Elena, shoving her toward the floor handle. "Take my personal keys. Unlock the black armored SUV in the carriage house garage. Do not leave until I come through that door."
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"Alejandro, what are you going to do?"
I reloaded my weapon, my eyes narrowing into two slits of cold steel. "I'm going to introduce myself to the people who made my wife spend her final days living in terror."
