Chapter 4 - The Midnight Flight
The freezing November wind off the Long Island Sound tore at our clothes as we burst through the heavy heavy metal security doors onto the concrete rooftop. The sky was an ink-black void, save for the distant, flashing red lights of a police cruiser miles away on the main highway.
My private Eurocopter sat in the center of the pad, its rotors still, looking like a sleeping mechanical bird.
"Can you fly that?" Hunter yelled over the howling wind, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps as she clutched Leo tightly against her chest. The baby had begun to cry again—a loud, healthy, vigorous sound that filled my chest with a strange, foreign warmth despite the lethal chaos surrounding us.
"I can fly anything with an engine," I said, rushing toward the cockpit door and throwing it open. "Get in the back. Strap yourself and Leo into the reinforced medical transport seat."
I jumped into the pilot's seat, flicking a sequence of switches on the overhead console. The twin turbine engines groaned to life, a high-pitched whine that quickly escalated into a deep, rhythmic thrum as the massive carbon-fiber blades began to rotate slowly above us.
Suddenly, the roof access doors flew open again.
Three of Marco’s corrupted security guards burst onto the pad, their automatic rifles raised. Bullets began to chew through the concrete of the helipad, sparks flying as the rounds struck the armored landing skids of the helicopter.
A sharp crack echoed through the cockpit as a round shattered the lower plexiglass window near my feet.
"Lorenzo, they’re going to hit the fuel tank!" Hunter screamed from the back.
I didn't answer. I pulled back on the collective control stick with everything I had. The Eurocopter lifted off the deck with a violent, banking surge, tilting precariously to the left as the wind caught the rotors. I pushed the nose down, sweeping the tail around in a tight arc that sent the backwash of the blades slamming into the guards on the roof, knocking two of them off their feet.
We lifted into the night sky, leaving the million-dollar mansion—and the vipers inside it—shrinking into the darkness below.
As the helicopter leveled out at three thousand feet, heading toward a secure, off-the-grid safehouse I maintained in the dense forests of upstate New York, the silence of the cabin settled in.
I looked through the rearview mirror. Hunter was leaning back against the leather seat, her eyes closed, her chest heaving as she tried to calm her racing pulse. She had wrapped Leo in a wool survival blanket from the cabin’s emergency kit. The boy was fast asleep, his small face pressed against her collarbone, perfectly content.
"Hunter," I said through the helicopter’s intercom headset, my voice calm but intense. "You saved my son's life twice tonight. First from starvation, then in that stairwell. Who the hell are you?"
She opened her eyes, looking at the back of my helmet in the reflection of the glass. "I told you, Mr. Rossi. I’m just a maid. A woman who lost everything three weeks ago."
"A maid doesn't keep her head during a tactical firefight, and a maid doesn't carry an industrial chemical spray like an offensive weapon," I replied, adjusting the flight controls as we cleared the coastline. "Your background check said you were from Ohio. It didn't say anything about an abusive ex-boyfriend or a stillborn daughter."
Hunter let out a long, shuddering breath, her fingers gently tracing Leo’s tiny ear. "My ex-boyfriend isn't just a regular criminal, Mr. Rossi. His name is Silas Vance. He’s a low-level enforcer for the Luciano family in Brooklyn. That’s how he got me this job at your estate. He wanted an insider to keep track of your security schedules."
My hand froze on the control stick. My blood went completely still.
"Silas Vance," I repeated, the name burning into my memory. "You were planted in my house by the people who killed my wife."
"No!" Hunter cried, her voice cracking with desperation. "I didn't know what they were planning! Silas told me it was just a regular corporate estate job. He threatened to kill my mother if I didn't take it and send him daily updates on when the guards shifted. But when I found out I was pregnant, I tried to run away from him. That’s when... that’s when he threw me down the stairs."
She looked down at Leo, her shoulders shaking with silent, agonizing tears. "My baby died, Mr. Rossi. Lily never drew a single breath. I came back to work because I had nowhere else to go, and because I wanted to find a way to stop Silas. I didn't know they were poisoning your son. I swear to God, I didn't know."
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I stared at the black landscape passing beneath the helicopter. The web of betrayal was larger than I had ever imagined. The Lucianos hadn't just attacked my car; they had infiltrated every layer of my life, using a grieving mother as an unwitting pawn and my trusted doctor as an executioner.
"We’re landing in twenty minutes, Hunter," I said softly, the tone of my voice shifting from an employer to a man who had just found his only ally in a world of ghosts. "And then, you and I are going to burn the Luciano family to the ground."
