Chapter 5 - The Glass and the Gun
The world erupted into chaos.
A high-powered rifle bullet punched through the reinforced glass, ricocheting off the black stone desk with a shower of sparks and stone splinters.
Before Chloe could even scream, Lorenzo’s hand slammed into her waist. He tackled her to the floor, wrapping his massive body around hers like a human shield as they slammed against the carpet behind the desk.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
More rounds tore through the office, shattering the remaining glass, shredding the leather chairs, and turning the wooden cabinets into toothpicks.
Chloe was pinned beneath Lorenzo, her face buried in his chest. She could smell the crisp cotton of his shirt, the metallic tang of gunpowder, and the heat of his blood. He was entirely silent, his body tense as iron, shielding her head with one hand while his other pulled a heavy matte-black pistol from his shoulder holster.
“Stay down,” Lorenzo commanded in her ear, his voice deadly calm amidst the thunder of gunfire.
“I wasn't planning on doing a tap dance!” Chloe gasped, clinging to his shirt.
The double doors of the office burst open.
“BOSS!” Matteo roared, diving into the room with two men behind him, returning fire out the shattered window toward the rooftop across the street. “SNIPER ON THE FEDEX BUILDING!”
“CLEAR THE FLOOR!” Lorenzo yelled back.
He grabbed Chloe by the arm, pulling her up into a low crouch. Keeping his body between her and the window, he hauled her out of the inner office, through her secretarial bay, and into the private executive elevator behind her desk.
He shoved her inside the steel car, slapping the button for the basement.
“Stay in the car until Matteo comes for you,” Lorenzo ordered, his gun held low at his side.
Chloe grabbed his wrist through the narrowing gap of the sliding steel doors. Her knuckles were white, her eyes wide with sudden, terrifying panic—not for herself, but for him.
“Lorenzo!” she cried out, using his first name without thinking. “Don't go back out there!”
Lorenzo looked at her hand on his wrist, then up at her face. A strange, fierce light flared in his dark eyes.
“They broke my window, Chloe,” he said softly, offering her a dark, lethal smile. “And they scared my secretary. Nobody leaves this building alive tonight.”
The elevator doors snapped shut, cutting off her view of his face.
The steel car dropped rapidly, leaving Chloe alone in the silence, her hands shaking, her suit covered in stone dust and glass splinters.
Twenty minutes later, the elevator doors slid open in the sub-basement parking garage.
Matteo was standing there, his coat torn, a smear of blood across his cheek, but his expression was entirely relaxed. He was holding a fresh bottle of water and a clean towel.
“You okay, kid?” Matteo asked, handing her the towel.
Chloe took it with trembling hands, wiping the dust from her face. “Is he... is Lorenzo alive?”
Matteo snorted. “Boss took out the sniper from forty stories up with a iron-sight handgun through a snowstorm. The guy is a demon, Chloe. You don't need to worry about him.”
Chloe let out a long, shuddering breath, leaning back against the steel elevator wall. “Who did this, Matteo? Who tried to kill him?”
Matteo’s smile vanished. His face turned grim under the harsh fluorescent lights of the garage.
“The rifle was registered to a shell company owned by Dominic Moretti,” Matteo said quietly. “The guy whose contract you flagged on your first day.”
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Chloe’s mind raced. The missing math. The wire in the lamp. The forged entry in the Libro d'Oro. The sniper on the roof.
It wasn't four different problems. It was one single, massive operation designed to tear down Lorenzo Rossy from the inside out—and she was standing right in the middle of the crosshairs.
