Chapter 10 – THE TRAITOR WITHIN

The smoke from the east wing was creeping into the hallway, stinging my eyes, but I could see the scene perfectly clear.

My father was on his knees, his hands raised. My mother was backed against the wall, weeping silently, terrified to make a sound.

And holding the gun was Paulie, a young, quiet guard who had worked for the Moretti family for three years. He was the one who usually fetched my tea in the mornings.

“Paulie, what are you doing?!” I screamed.

Paulie flinched, his hand trembling slightly, but he didn’t lower the weapon. “I’m sorry, Emma. Silas got to me months ago. He told me if I didn’t help him from the inside, he’d kill my sister.”

“Silas is using you!” I pleaded, taking a slow step forward. “He’s going to kill you the moment you hand my father over! Luca can protect your sister. Just put the gun down!”

“Luca’s empire is burning!” Paulie yelled, panicked, glancing nervously toward the sounds of gunfire echoing from the east wing. “Silas wants Arthur delivered to the extraction point at the back gate. Move, Arthur. Get up!”

My father slowly stood, his face remarkably calm for a man staring down the barrel of a gun. He looked at me, a silent message in his eyes.

Stay back.

“I’ll go with you, son,” my father said gently to Paulie. “Just leave my wife and daughter alone.”

“No!” I shouted, lunging forward.

Paulie panicked and swung his arm back, striking me across the face with the heavy butt of the pistol.

The impact sent me crashing into a heavy antique wooden side table. The world spun in a dizzying blur of pain. My cheekbone throbbed intensely, and I tasted copper in my mouth.

I slumped to the floor, my vision swimming.

“Emma!” my mother screamed, trying to run to me, but Paulie shoved her back against the wall.

“I said move!” Paulie shouted at my father.

As Paulie grabbed my father by the collar and dragged him down the hallway toward the servant’s exit, I struggled to push myself up from the floor.

My hand brushed against something cold and metallic beneath the splintered wood of the antique table I had crashed into.

I blinked through the haze.

When the table broke, a hidden compartment underneath it had cracked open.

Resting inside was a beautiful, vintage silver necklace with a heavy diamond pendant.

But that wasn’t what caught my attention. Tucked beneath the necklace was a small, black iron key.

My mind raced. Mrs. Carter had told me once that the original builder of the Moretti estate, Luca’s grandfather, was paranoid about raids during Prohibition. He had built hidden tunnels connecting the servant’s corridors directly to the perimeter walls.

I grabbed the iron key and forced myself to stand. The nausea from the fading poison and the fresh blow to my head made me sway, but pure adrenaline pushed me forward.

“Mom, find Luca,” I gasped out. “Tell him Paulie is taking Dad to the back gate.”

Without waiting for her reply, I sprinted down the opposite corridor. I remembered a strange, heavy iron door in the wine cellar that Mrs. Carter had always said was sealed shut and broken.

I reached the cellar, my lungs burning.

I found the rusted iron door hidden behind a rack of vintage reds. I jammed the black iron key into the ancient lock and twisted with all my strength.

It clicked.

I pulled the heavy door open and plunged into the dark, damp earthen tunnel.

I ran blindly, feeling the cold dirt walls with my hands, praying the tunnel led where I thought it did. I could hear the muffled sounds of the gunfight raging above ground, Marco’s men holding the line against Silas’s mercenaries.

After five agonizing minutes of running, I hit a wooden ladder. I climbed it rapidly and pushed open a heavy wooden trapdoor.

I emerged into the cold night air, hidden behind a thick patch of overgrown ivy.

I was just outside the estate’s back gate.

Fifty yards away, Silas Thorne’s armored Bentley was idling on the deserted road.

And walking toward it, a gun still pressed to his back, was my father. Paulie was sweating profusely, looking over his shoulder for Luca’s men.

Silas stepped out of the back of the Bentley, holding his umbrella, a cruel smile stretching across his face as his prize was delivered.

“Excellent work, Paulie,” Silas purred. “Put him in the trunk.”

“What about my sister?” Paulie demanded, his voice shaking. “You promised she’d be safe if I brought him out!”

Silas’s smile didn’t waver. He reached into his coat and casually pulled out a suppressed pistol.

“Your sister was dead before I even knocked on the front gates,” Silas said smoothly.

He raised the gun and shot Paulie directly in the chest.

Paulie collapsed onto the wet gravel, dead before he realized he had been betrayed.

My father tried to run, but two massive mercenaries stepped out from the shadows of the Bentley, grabbing his arms and forcing him to his knees in the dirt.

Silas walked over, looking down at my father with cold, dead eyes.

“You cost me twenty million dollars, Arthur,” Silas whispered, pressing the barrel of his gun against my father’s forehead. “I’m going to make sure your death costs you everything.”

“Take me,” my father begged. “Just leave my family.”

“Oh, I will,” Silas smiled. “Right after I send them your head in a box.”

Silas’s finger tightened on the trigger.

I couldn’t wait for Luca. I couldn’t scream.

I reached into the pocket of my coat. I didn’t have a gun. I didn’t have a weapon.

But I still had the detonator.

The detonator to the C4 explosives from the steel mill.

The explosion at the mill had been massive, but Marco had mentioned earlier that Marcus’s men had only managed to cut the wire to half the blocks before the timer ran out. Marco had remotely disabled the other half to salvage the receiver.

I didn’t know if Marco had taken the remaining C4 out of his SUV. And I knew Marco’s SUV was parked directly on the other side of the brick wall behind the Bentley.

It was a blind, desperate gamble.

I stepped out from the ivy, raising the detonator high in the air.

“Silas!” I screamed.

Silas paused, turning his head in surprise. He saw me standing in the fog, unarmed, holding a small plastic box with a red light.

He laughed. “Emma Lawson. Coming to watch your father die?”

“No,” I said, my voice eerily calm as I stared down the monster who wanted to break my family. “I’m coming to collect your debt.”

I pressed the red button.