Chapter 7 - The Breach at the Estate
The hours crawled by like agonizing centuries.
I sat by the window holding the cold silver gun on my lap, watching the sun slowly move across the pale sky. Frank stood outside on the porch, smoking cigarettes in silence, his hand never leaving his sidearm.
By 2:00 p.m., my phone vibrated on the table.
My heart slammed against my ribs. I snatched it up.
It was an encrypted video feed forwarded directly from Frank’s tablet.
"What is this?" I called out, opening the door to the porch.
Frank walked inside, his face tense. "Don Duca ordered us to keep the tactical camera feed live. He wanted you to see that he is safe."
I looked at the screen.
The video showed a body-camera view from one of Aleandro’s men as they breached the iron gates of the main Duca estate twenty miles away.
Smoke filled the screen. The sound of rapid automatic gunfire erupted from the tablet’s small speakers, making me flinch.
Aleandro was at the front of the assault group.
He moved through the marble hallways of his ancestral home like an unstoppable force of nature. His black coat flared behind him as he fired with terrifying, rhythmic accuracy. Men in dark suits tried to hold the grand staircase, but Aleandro’s crew swept through them like a dark tide.
There was no hesitation in his movements. No fear.
He was reclaiming his kingdom stone by stone, bullet by bullet.
The feed shifted as Aleandro stepped through the double oak doors of the second-floor study—the very room where his father had once ruled.
Sitting behind the massive mahogany desk was Uncle Marco.
Marco was a fat, middle-aged man with thinning hair, wearing an expensive silk suit that was now dark with sweat. He held a revolver in his shaking hand, pointing it at the doorway.
"Aleandro..." Marco gasped, his voice crackling through the tablet’s speaker. "It... it was a mistake! The Russians... they forced my hand!"
Aleandro walked into the center of the study, lowering his handgun to his side. He didn't look angry; he looked bored, cold, and utterly detached.
"You sat in my chair, Marco," Aleandro said, his baritone voice clear over the microphone. "You used my pen. You spent my money. And worst of all... you made my woman cry."
"Aleandro, please! We're blood! Family!" Marco wept, dropping his gun onto the desk and falling to his knees.
Aleandro walked up to the desk. He didn't raise his weapon. He simply reached out, grabbed Marco by his lapels, and dragged him toward the open French balcony doors that looked down onto the stone courtyard fifty feet below.
"Family doesn't touch what belongs to me," Aleandro growled softly into his uncle's ear.
The feed abruptly cut to static.
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I stared at the black screen, my chest heaving, my fingers frozen over the glass.
Silence returned to the cabin, heavy and suffocating.
