“Serve the Maro table, or you’re fired before the lunch rush!” My manager, Frank, shoved a sweating metal tray of ice water into my hands. His breath smelled like cheap cigarillos and panic.

The sound of tires crunching violently over gravel echoed up through the floorboards of the attic like gunfire.

Donovan immediately ran to the dormer window, pulling back the dusty lace curtain. “Three vehicles. Unmarked Suburban fleet. They just rammed the secondary security checkpoint at the lower gate.”

“How many men?” Antoine asked, his voice instantly dropping into the cold, calculated tone of a military commander.

“At least eight,” Donovan replied, drawing a secondary magazine from his belt and slapping it into his firearm. “Tactical gear. No insignia. They knew the main gate code, boss. They didn't blow the lock; they entered the authorization pin.”

My heart was hammering so hard against my ribs I thought it might crack. I tightened my arm around Camille, who was whimpering quietly against my shoulder, sensing the sudden surge of adrenaline in the room.

“An inside job,” Antoine said, his eyes dark with a terrifying, calm rage. He turned to me. “Della, take Camille down to the nursery. Grab Theo and Elias. There is a reinforced panic room behind the wine cellar in the basement.”

“No,” I said, standing my ground despite the terror screaming through my veins.

Antoine took a step toward me, his tall frame looming over me. “This is not a debate, Miss Marsh. Armed men are in my driveway.”

“And you think hiding us in a basement with one entry point is smart when they already have your security codes?” I countered, my voice sharp and loud enough to cut through the panic. “If they know your house codes, they know where your panic room is! They’ll seal us in there and burn the place down!”

Antoine stopped dead in his tracks.

“She’s right, boss,” Donovan admitted grimly, checking his watch. “If they compromised the gate network, they have the architectural blueprints. The cellar is a death trap.”

Antoine looked at me, his dark eyes searching my face for any sign of hysteria. He found none. I was terrified, yes, but my survival instincts—honed by years of surviving poverty, loss, and hard living—were fully operational.

“What do you suggest, Miss Marsh?” Antoine asked softly.

“The old servant's passage,” I said, recalling the estate floor plan I had studied in my contract packet. “It runs from the kitchen pantry out to the old carriage house near the parish drainage canal. It’s not on the modern electrical grid. It’s purely brick and wood.”

Antoine blinked, surprised. “That passage was boarded up in 1970.”

“I found the latch yesterday while looking for clean linens,” I replied flatly. “The wood is rotted, but a heavy shoulder can break it open. We leave through the back, take my Civic, and disappear into the Quarter before they even clear the second floor.”

Antoine didn't waste another second. “Donovan, secure the top of the stairs. Delay them for three minutes, then fall back to the carriage house. Julian, wipe those hard drives and destroy the server bridge.”

“On it, boss!” Julian yelled, pulling a heavy magnet from his tool bag and slamming it onto the computer towers.

Antoine took Camille from my arms, tucking her securely against his chest, and grabbed my wrist with his free hand. His grip was warm, solid, and absolute. “Stay behind me. If anyone shoots, you drop.”

We sprinted down the narrow attic stairs back into the nursery. I grabbed a large canvas diaper bag, shoving extra formula, diapers, and three heavy wool blankets inside. Elias and Theo were wide awake in their cribs, their tiny faces pale with confusion.

“Come here, sweet boys,” I whispered, keeping my tone smooth and soothing as I lifted both boys into my arms. I began to hum those four notes, low and steady, right into their ears.

Instantly, Theo buried his face in the crook of my neck, stopping his whimper before it could start. Elias wrapped his small arms tightly around my collarbone.

Downstairs, glass shattered violently as the front oak doors were breached.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Gunfire erupted on the ground floor—heavy, suppressed rounds thudding into plaster and mahogany. Donovan’s heavier automatic pistol answered from the top of the grand staircase, the concussive blasts shaking the chandelier hanging outside the nursery door.

“Move!” Antoine commanded, pushing open the nursery's rear service door.

We moved down the narrow, unlit wooden service staircase that servants had used a century ago. The steps creaked under our weight, smelling of age and damp insulation. Below us, shouting voices echoing in thick local accents bounced off the walls.

“Find the ledger!” a rough voice roared from the foyer. “And bring the kids! The client wants them secured before the parish police get the silent alarm!”

The client wants them secured.

My blood ran cold. This wasn't a robbery. This wasn't even an assassination attempt on Antoine. This was an abduction team sent to harvest Isabella’s children.

We reached the ground floor kitchen pantry. The room was dark, illuminated only by the flashing lights of security monitors on the wall. Antoine handed Camille back to me, pulled a heavy iron crowbar from a tool bench, and jammed it into the seam of a faux pine cabinet.

With a brutal grunt of physical exertion, Antoine threw his body weight against the bar. The wood splintered with a loud screech, revealing a dusty, spiderweb-draped brick tunnel leading down into the dark.

“Julian, go first!” Antoine ordered as the technician tumbled into the opening. “Della, give me the boys.”

“I’ve got them,” I hissed, ducking my head and stepping straight into the black crawlspace. “Just cover our back!”

We moved through the cramped brick tunnel in complete darkness, guided only by the small beam of Antoine’s penlight behind us. The air was thick with the mud-and-sulfur stench of the nearby canal. Up ahead, Julian was grunting as he kicked out a wooden grate at the far end.

Fresh rain air rushed into the tunnel.

We burst out into the overgrown courtyard of the abandoned carriage house, fifty yards behind the main estate wall. My battered yellow Honda Civic was parked under a drooping oak tree near the alleyway.

Donovan suddenly burst through the tunnel exit behind us, his shoulder covered in drywall dust, bleeding from a graze on his cheekbone. “They’re clearing the second floor now, boss. We have maybe ninety seconds before they realize we bypassed the main halls.”

“Keys,” Antoine snapped, turning to me.

I pulled my car keys from my apron pocket and tossed them to him. “The driver's door sticks. You have to lift the handle while pulling.”

Antoine unlocked the car. We crammed into the small interior—Julian in the front passenger seat holding the diaper bag, me squeezed into the back seat with all three babies wrapped in blankets against my chest, and Donovan crouching in the rear hatchback space with his weapon trained on the rear glass.

Antoine fired the engine. The old four-cylinder motor sputtered, then roared to life.

He slammed the Civic into reverse, spinning the tires on the wet gravel, and launched us out of the carriage alley just as three armed men in black tactical vests sprinted around the corner of the estate.

Automatic gunfire chipped the brick wall above us. SPIT! SPIT! SPIT!

Donovan returned fire through the shattered rear window, forcing the shooters to dive behind a brick wall.

Antoine slammed the car into drive, stomping the accelerator. The Civic surged forward onto the rain-slicked public street, leaving the burning lights of the Maro estate behind in a blur of gray storm and red tail lights.

In the back seat, surrounded by the smell of gunsmoke and wet wool, the three babies clung to my clothes.

Camille lifted her tiny head from my chest, looked up at my face through the dim light of passing streetlamps, and whispered softly:

“Mama... safe?”

Tears pricked the back of my eyes, but I swallowed them down, wrapping my arms tighter around all three of them.

“Yes, baby,” I whispered back, my voice hard as granite. “Mama’s got you. Nobody is taking you.”

Antoine caught my eye in the rearview mirror. His dark gaze held mine for a long, quiet second over the dashboard lights.

“Where are we going?” Julian panicked from the front seat, wiping blood from his forehead. “They have the house, they have the servers, they have the port authorities!”

“We’re going to the one place in New Orleans they will never think to look,” Antoine said, his voice deadly quiet as he turned the steering wheel toward the industrial riverfront.

“Where?” Donovan asked from the back.