Chapter 2 - THE SIEGE OF MORETTI MANOR
The heavy bulletproof glass of the dining room windows rattled as automatic gunfire erupted across the front lawn. The sharp, mechanical thump-thump-thump of heavy caliber rifles cut through the afternoon quiet, followed immediately by the booming response of my perimeter guards' shotguns.
"Get them under the table! Now!" I roared, shedding my suit jacket in one fluid motion.
The cold detachment that had governed my life for twenty years vanished, replaced by a primal, roaring instinct. I didn't know how these children existed. I didn't understand the lie Sofia had lived, or why Elena had kept this secret for four agonizing years. All I knew was that four small human beings bearing my blood, my face, and my late wife's eyes were currently in the line of fire.
Elena scrambled, shoving the four boys beneath the massive, reinforced mahogany dining table. The boys didn't scream; they huddled together, the eldest wrapping his arms around his brothers with a practiced, terrifying familiarity that told me this wasn't the first time they had been forced to hide from gunfire.
"Marco!" I barked into my lapel radio as I ducked beneath the window frame. "Report!"
"Boss! They breached the south gate!" Marco’s voice was barely audible over the deafening static and gunfire. "It’s not the Commission! It’s an tactical team—unmarked armor, suppressed weapons, professional movement! They aren't here to negotiate, Alejandro! They're sweeping the ground floor!"
An tactical team inside my home. Unmarked.
I pulled two extra magazines from my belt, racked the slide of my Sig Sauer, and glanced back at Elena. She was kneeling by the table, holding Mateo's small hand, her body trembling violently.
"Who are they, Elena?" I demanded, my voice cutting through the noise of breaking glass downstairs. "If I'm going to kill them, I need to know who I'm sending to hell."
"The clinic," she sobbed, pressing her forehead against the polished wood. "The men from the St. Jude Medical Institute in Geneva! Sofia... Sofia didn't die of an illness, Alejandro! They were experimenting on her! They forced the pregnancy! She escaped them to give birth, but they've been hunting the boys ever since!"
The words hit me harder than a physical blow. St. Jude Medical Institute. A shadow corporation specializing in high-end genetic research, funded by international oligarchs. A entity I had personally invested millions into five years ago, believing they were trying to cure my wife's terminal blood disease.
They hadn't been trying to cure her. They had used her.
Before I could digest the horrifying reality, the heavy oak doors of the dining room shattered inward. A flashbang grenade skittered across the marble floor, sparking white-hot.
"Cover your eyes!" I screamed.
I lunged forward, kicking the heavy steel-reinforced serving cart directly over the grenade just as it detonated. The deafening BANG blew the cart onto its side, filling the room with thick, acrid smoke and blinding light, but absorbing the lethal concussive wave.
Through the white haze, two figures clad in dark grey tactical armor, carrying suppressed short-barrel rifles, cleared the doorway. Their movements were swift, calculated, and terrifyingly silent.
I didn't give them a second to acquire their targets.
I popped up from behind the overturned cart, firing three quick rounds. The first striker took the heavy steel plate on his chest, steeled back, but my second and third rounds caught him precisely under the helmet line. He dropped instantly.
The second shooter pivoted, his rifle spitting a quiet stream of lead that chewed through the mahogany table, sending splinters flying into the air. One of the boys let out a small, terrified whimpering sound.
Hearing that sound sent a surge of pure adrenaline through my veins.
I vaulted over the overturned cart, closing the distance between us in a fraction of a second. I grabbed the barrel of his rifle, shoving it upward toward the plaster ceiling as a burst of bullets destroyed the crystal chandelier above us. I slammed my heavy tactical knife into the joint of his body armor, right below the armpit, twisting with brutal precision.
The intruder collapsed, gasping for air, before I drove my heel into his temple, silencing him permanently.
The dining room fell into a heavy, smoke-filled quiet, broken only by the crackle of distant gunfire from the lower level and the ragged breathing of the four boys under the table.
I stood over the two fallen men, my chest heaving, blood dripping from my knife onto the pristine white rug. I knelt down beside the fallen squad leader, ripping off his tactical helmet and pulling back his collar.
Stamped into the skin of his neck was a dark, ink-black tattoo: a serpent coiled around a syringe. The insignia of Apex Biopharmaceuticals—a subsidiary of St. Jude.
I turned around slow. The boys were staring at me through the smoke. Mateo, the smallest one who had held the picture, wasn't looking at the blood or the bodies. He was looking at my face, his eyes wide, brown, and filled with an eerie, quiet understanding.
"Are you the monster?" he asked softly, his voice trembling slightly. "Mommy said the monster would come to protect us when the bad men found us."
My breath caught in my throat. The monster. Sofia hadn't told them to fear me as a villain; she had told them I was a weapon to be unleashed when the world came for them.
"I am," I whispered, stepping toward the table and offering my hand. "I'm your father. And nobody touches my family."
The heavy metal door at the back of the dining room burst open, and Marco ran in, covered in soot, two of my loyalists right behind him.
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"Boss! We cleared the foyer, but there are two more transport trucks coming up the avenue!" Marco yelled, his eyes widening as he saw the children under the table. "Mother of God... Alejandro, who are they?"
"They're my sons," I said, my voice echoing with a cold, absolute authority that made every man in the room instantly straighten. "Seal the estate. Get the armored Suburbans into the subterranean garage. We're leaving Chicago tonight."
