Chapter 5 - The Siege of the West Wing
“You're not shooting anyone in my house, Mother,” Matteo said, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper.
In one lightning-fast motion, Matteo pulled a sleek black tactical pistol from his shoulder holster. He didn't aim at his mother. He shot the light fixture directly above the guards' heads.
BANG!
The heavy crystal chandelier exploded into a shower of darkness and falling glass.
Women screamed, glass shattered on the hardwood, and gunshots immediately erupted in the pitch-black study as Donna Elena’s guards fired blindly toward the desk.
“Get down!” Matteo roared, grabbing Liana by her collar and shoving her and the baby beneath the heavy mahogany desk just as a salvo of bullets tore through the leather armchairs above them.
Liana curled her body into a protective ball over Nico, covering his small ears with her hands as the deafening roar of gunfire filled the enclosed room.
Matteo fired three precise shots into the dark. Two heavy thuds echoed across the floor, followed by the groans of falling men.
“Julian!” Matteo growled into the shadows.
Dr. Mercer was cowering behind the sofa, holding his hands over his head. “Don't shoot! Don't shoot!”
“Take them through the service door!” Matteo commanded, kicking open a hidden wooden panel set into the mahogany wall behind his desk. “Go to the west wing panic room! Now!”
Liana didn't wait to be told twice. She scrambled out from under the desk, holding Nico tightly against her chest, and plunged through the narrow hidden service passage. Dr. Mercer scrambled in right behind her, sobbing hysterically.
Matteo stood at the threshold of the hidden door, his gun pointed back into the smoky, dark study.
“Matteo!” Donna Elena’s voice echoed through the dark, sharp and hysterical. “If you protect that girl, Chicago will go to war with us! Vincent Moretti will burn this city to the ground when he finds out his daughter's twin is alive!”
“Let him try,” Matteo growled.
He slammed the heavy wooden panel shut, sliding a heavy iron locking bar across the frame, sealing his mother and her remaining men in the study.
The service passage was narrow, dark, and smelled of damp plaster. Liana ran as fast as her legs could carry her, her maid’s shoes slipping on the dusty floorboards. Nico was crying now, terrified by the loud explosions, his tiny hands clutching at her torn apron.
“Shh, shh, I’m here, baby. Mommy’s here,” Liana wept as she ran, kissing the baby's soft forehead over and over again. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Elias... Nico... my baby.”
They emerged into the sprawling, dimly lit corridor of the mansion’s west wing.
Matteo caught up to them in four broad strides, his dark shirt stained with drywall dust, his face covered in gun smoke. He grabbed Liana’s arm, guiding her toward a massive, reinforced steel door at the end of the hall.
“Inside!” he ordered.
He punched a seven-digit code into the digital keypad beside the steel frame. The heavy door disengaged with a pneumatic hiss, swinging open to reveal a carpeted, windowless vault equipped with emergency supplies, medical kits, and security monitors.
They burst inside, and Matteo slammed the steel door shut, spinning the heavy manual locking wheel until it clicked into place.
Liana sank onto the leather sofa in the center of the vault, her whole body shaking violently. She held the baby close, weeping uncontrollably as the sheer weight of the horror caught up to her.
Her dead child wasn't her son. Her real son was alive in her lap. Her twin sister had been murdered by the woman living upstairs.
Matteo walked over to the bank of security monitors on the wall. His dark eyes scanned the live camera feeds.
On the screens, Donna Elena was already in the grand foyer, surrounded by a dozen heavily armed men in dark suits. Sitting in a wheelchair near the front entrance was an elderly, silver-haired man with a cruel, aristocrat face—Vincent Moretti, the head of the Chicago syndicate.
He had just arrived with his private army.
“They’ve locked down the compound,” Matteo said, his jaw clenching as he watched the monitors. “Vincent brought twenty men. They’ve surrounded the mansion.”
Liana looked up from the baby, her face pale with terror. “What are they going to do?”
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Matteo turned around, checking the magazine of his tactical pistol before slamming it back into the handle with a sharp CLICK.
“They’re going to try to breach this room and kill all three of us,” Matteo said coldly. “Because as long as you and that baby are alive, they lose control of both empires.”
