Chapter 1 - The Blood on the Marble
Lorenzo Moretti knew his disabled twin was about to die because he was watching it happen on a six-inch screen.
His armored Cadillac Escalade tore through the blinding white wall of a Chicago blizzard, the heavy winter tires chewing violently through ice and slush at ninety miles an hour. Inside the darkened passenger cabin, the air was dead and suffocating, smelling of expensive leather, gun oil, and the crisp, ozone stench of impending slaughter.
Lorenzo sat rigid in the plush leather seat, his six-foot-four frame coiled like a steel spring. His dark eyes—cold, slate grey, and feared across three continents—were locked onto the glowing high-definition monitor resting on his knee.
The hidden lens camera, concealed behind the wooden frame of a oil painting in Mateo’s third-floor bedroom, showed the room in ruthless clarity.
Mateo lay helpless in his specialized, pressure-adjusting hospital bed. Two years ago, an explosive ambush in Naples had shattered Mateo’s spine, taking away his body, his mobility, and most of his voice. The brilliant, laughing young man who had once been Lorenzo’s mirror image was now a silent prisoner in his own skin, unable to move anything below his collarbone.
The screen flickered.
Outside Mateo’s bedroom door, the three-hundred-pound Moretti syndicate guard was already down, a slick crimson puddle pooling beneath his crushed throat.
The estate’s primary security cameras went black, swallowed by a digital blackout virus.
And a masked man wearing tactical gear, holding a suppressed Sig Sauer pistol, pushed the heavy mahogany door open, stepping silently into Mateo’s sanctuary.
“Faster,” Lorenzo ordered, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that made the driver’s knuckles turn white on the steering wheel.
“Boss, the roads are solid ice—"
“I said faster,” Lorenzo growled, racking the slide of his custom Kimber .45, chambering a hollow-point round with a sharp, metallic clack.
They were still twenty-one minutes away.
Twenty-one minutes across snow-choked city streets. Mateo didn’t have twenty-one seconds. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t even scream for help.
On the screen, the assassin raised the suppressed pistol, aiming it directly between Mateo’s terrified, wide eyes.
Then the bedroom door clicked wider.
Lydia Coppola stepped inside carrying a fresh stack of folded white bath towels.
The new maid. Nine days on staff.
Lorenzo had personally reviewed her background check—a twenty-eight-year-old orphan from South Chicago, heavy-set, quiet, constantly hiding her soft, voluptuous curves beneath oversized blue denim aprons and loose grey sweaters. She was a woman who usually kept her head down, dusting antique vases, avoiding eye contact with the syndicate men who patrolled the hallways.
She saw the fallen guard lying in the hallway blood.
She saw the gunman.
She saw Mateo.
Lorenzo’s hand tightened around the tablet until the plastic casing groaned under his grip. “Run,” he whispered at the screen, his heart slamming against his ribs. “Run, you idiot.”
Lydia dropped the towels.
But she didn’t run.
Her right palm slammed violently against the red emergency fire-door switch concealed beside Mateo’s doorframe—a hidden switch that only three people in the family were supposed to know existed.
A four-inch-thick steel fire shutter crashed down with a deafening hydraulic screech, trapping a second gunman outside in the hallway, cutting the primary attacker off from his reinforcement.
The gunman inside swung his weapon toward her, his face twisting in shock.
Lydia didn't freeze. She shoved a three-hundred-pound stainless steel medical cart straight into his path.
THWACK.
The heavy cart slammed into the attacker’s midsection. The pistol fired. A 9mm bullet tore through the antique mahogany bookcase behind her, showering the carpet with paper shards and wood splinters.
Mateo’s hazel eyes went wide with absolute terror.
Inside the moving SUV, Lorenzo half-rose from his leather seat, his eyes glued to the display.
Lydia wasn’t moving like a maid.
There was no panic in her stance, no wide-eyed hysteria. Her center of gravity was low, her footing on the slick marble floor impossibly secure despite her plush, rounded frame. She kicked a heavy velvet chair beneath the attacker’s knees, throwing a thick woolen blanket across his gun arm to obscure his sight, then rushed—not toward the open balcony exit—
Toward Mateo.
She released the quick-transfer locking board beneath his medical mattress, stepping into the narrow space between the bed and the wall, moving his paralyzed two-hundred-pound frame with the practiced, terrifying precision of someone who had cleared combat casualty zones under direct fire.
The assassin roared in frustration, tearing the woolen blanket from his face. He lunged forward, his heavy tactical boot kicking the chair aside. His gloved hand closed violently around Lydia’s thick dark hair, yanking her backward.
Mateo’s rolling medical bed rolled two feet away from her.
Lydia cried out in pain—a sharp, ragged sound—but instead of trying to break the grip on her hair, she twisted her torso into the attacker’s body, driving her elbow straight up into his throat.
The assassin gagged, his grip loosening just enough for her to break free.
May you like
Then the attacker reached inside his tactical vest, pulling a six-inch serrated combat blade from his chest sheath.
He drove the blade downward, aiming directly for Lydia’s throat.
