Chapter 8 - The Siege of Michigan Avenue
The peace lasted for three weeks. Dominic spent every free moment at the penthouse, learning how to be a father. He built Lego castles with Caleb, watched cartoon shows with Sophie, and read bedtime stories to Noah. For the first time in his life, Dominic Moretti was truly happy.
But Matteo Moretti was not a man to accept defeat.
On a foggy Tuesday night, while Dominic was at a shipping terminal overseeing a high-security cargo arrival, Matteo launched his desperate strike. He didn't use local crews; he hired a rogue paramilitary extraction team from Eastern Europe, bypassing the city’s usual informant network.
The power to the entire high-rise block on Michigan Avenue suddenly cut out. The backup generators initiated, but the security grid suffered a five-second delay—all the time the professionals needed to breach the lower parking garage.
Inside the penthouse, Elena heard the muffled sound of suppressed gunfire from the hallway.
"Mommy?" Sophie whimpered, waking up from the noise.
"Panic room, now!" Elena yelled, grabbing Sophie and Noah, while Caleb instinctively grabbed his mother’s cardigan, running beside her.
They made it inside the reinforced steel closet just as the main glass doors of the penthouse shattered inward. Armed men flooded the apartment, their flashlights cutting through the dark.
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Elena slammed the heavy steel door of the panic room, engaging the electronic locks. She pulled the children into the furthest corner, holding them tight as the sound of heavy boots banged against the outside of the steel bunker.
"Dominic!" Elena cried into the wall-mounted emergency intercom. "They're inside the apartment! They're trying to breach the door!"
