Chapter 4 - Blood in the Foyer
I didn't argue. I scooped Lily into my arms, ignoring the sudden weight of her trembling body, and bolted into the master suite.
The panic room was disguised behind a massive oak bookshelf in the walk-in closet. I pressed the hidden sequence Gabriel had whispered to me—three clicks left, one right—and the heavy steel wall slid open with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a small, reinforced room stocked with monitors, communication gear, and medical supplies.
I pulled Lily inside, settling her onto a narrow cot, and slammed the steel door shut, engaging the manual deadbolts.
Through the high-resolution monitors mounted on the wall, I could see the entire penthouse living room in crisp, glowing monochrome.
Gabriel stood in the center of the open-plan foyer just thirty feet from the private elevator doors. He had holstered his gun; instead, he stood with his hands resting casually at his sides, his broad shoulders filling out his shirt like a coiled spring.
Ding.
The elevator bell chimed softly.
The heavy metal doors slid open.
Four men stepped out into the foyer, dressed head-to-toe in tactical black gear, their faces obscured by ballistic masks and night-vision goggles. They were carrying suppressed submachine guns, moving with the cold, practiced discipline of professional hitmen.
At the back of the group stepped a fifth figure—slender, wearing an expensive wool coat, her blonde hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail.
Celeste.
"Gabriel, darling," Celeste’s voice filtered through the audio feeds into the panic room, sweet and dripping with artificial warmth. "I told you you were getting soft in your old age. Locking yourself away in Tribeca won't save you from the future."
Gabriel didn't move an inch.
"Celeste," Gabriel said, his voice echoing cleanly through the spacious room. "You always were terrible at math. Bringing Moretti’s cleanup crew into my home? That’s not an upgrade. That's a suicide note."
"Moretti is offering something you lost years ago, Gabriel—vision," Celeste snapped, stepping around the lead tactical operative, her eyes flashing with bitter malice. "You let Sarah soften you. You let domesticity turn a king into a suburban father. And now, thanks to your little brat upstairs, the entire council thinks you're a liability."
"Where is she?" Gabriel asked, ignoring the insult entirely. "Where did you stash the accounts?"
"Oh, they're already transferred," Celeste smiled coldly, pulling a sleek tablet from her coat pocket. "Every offshore shell company, every shipping dock, every piece of real estate. In twenty-four hours, the Varrick empire belongs to the Moretti family, and I... I get a very comfortable retirement in Zurich."
One of the tactical operatives raised his weapon, leveling the barrel directly at Gabriel’s chest.
"End it," Celeste commanded. "We don't have time for a family reunion."
What happened next defied human reaction speed.
Gabriel didn't dodge; he exploded into motion. In the exact millisecond the operative’s finger began to squeeze the trigger, Gabriel lunged forward, catching the barrel of the submachine gun with his left hand and redirecting it upward just as a deafening burst of gunfire shattered the high ceiling glass.
Before the second operative could raise his weapon, Gabriel’s right fist struck him squarely in the throat with bone-crushing force. The man dropped like a stone.
Chaos erupted in the foyer.
Gunfire lit up the room in strobing flashes of orange and white. Bullets chewed into the custom mahogany furniture and starred the reinforced glass windows. But Gabriel moved like a ghost through the hail of lead, using the momentum of his attackers against them, disarming the second man and using his body as a human shield before hurling him into the remaining guards.
Within thirty seconds, three of Moretti’s elite hitmen were down on the marble floor, groaning in pain or completely still.
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The fourth operative dropped his weapon, raising his hands in surrender as Gabriel’s heavy boot pinned his chest to the floor.
Celeste stood alone in the center of the carnage, her face completely drained of color, the tablet slipping from her trembling fingers to shatter against the marble.
