Chapter 5 - The Trap at the Lake
Enzo spun around instantly, pushing Harper behind him and drawing his Sig Sauer in a single, fluid motion.
At the top of the iron stairs stood Preston Whitcomb.
He was dressed in a dark cashmere overcoat, holding a silenced pistol. Behind him stood four heavy-set men armed with tactical shotguns—the disgraced former cops Big Mike had warned them about.
Preston looked older than he had at the wedding. His hair was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot, his aristocratic composure frayed at the edges. But his mouth was twisted into a bitter, triumphant grin.
“Did you really think I wouldn't notice the silent trigger on the boathouse server, Enzo?” Preston sneered, his voice echoing in the concrete bunker. “I’ve been watching your SUV on my infrared cameras since you crossed the county line.”
Enzo kept his gun leveled at Preston’s chest, his body completely blocking Harper from their line of sight.
“Put the gun down, Preston,” Enzo said coldly. “You’re surrounded. Big Mike is outside.”
Preston chuckled—a dry, rattling sound. “Big Mike is currently sitting in the snow with a broken collarbone, courtesy of my security chief. You walked into my house, DeLuca. You played the hero for my broken daughter, and now you’re going to die in the same hole where I keep my old papers.”
Harper stepped out slightly from behind Enzo’s arm, her eyes fixed on her father.
“Why, Dad?” she asked, her voice surprisingly free of fear now. It was filled only with disgust. “Why kill Nathan DeLuca? Why bring this war to our family?”
Preston looked at her, his eyes hardening into the familiar, cruel glare she had endured her entire life.
“Because Nathan DeLuca was a street thug who thought he could audit my books!” Preston barked. “He came into my office demanding payment for a debt I owed his father. He spoke to me like I was his equal! I am a Whitcomb! My grandfather built the hospitals in this city! I don't pay street scum!”
“So you hired men to shoot him in the back,” Enzo said, his trigger finger tightening fractionally on the cold steel.
“I solved a problem!” Preston shouted, his composure snapping entirely. “Just like I solved the problem of your mother, Harper! She was weak! She threatened to leave me, to take half my firm! So I helped her along with her pills! And you... you were supposed to be my final transaction! You were supposed to keep this animal busy until I could clear my accounts in Zurich and slip out of the country!”
Harper closed her eyes for a brief second. Hearing her father admit to her mother’s murder didn't break her. It set her completely free. Every lingering thread of guilt, every terrible thought that she had somehow deserved his abuse, evaporated into the cold bunker air.
“You aren't a titan, Dad,” Harper said softly, opening her eyes. “You’re just a pathetic coward hiding behind a gun.”
Preston’s face flushed red with rage. “Kill them both,” he ordered his guards. “Throw them in the lake with the anchor chains.”
Before the guards could raise their shotguns, the heavy concrete ceiling above them shook violently with a deafening EXPLOSION.
Shattered wood, glass, and heavy snow rained down from the boathouse above as Salvatore’s team blew the rear wall of the structure with breaching charges.
The flashbang grenade dropped straight down the stairwell, exploding in a blinding flash of white light and a thunderous CRACK.
Preston’s guards screamed, disoriented, clutching their bleeding ears and blinded eyes.
Enzo moved like lightning.
He fired three rapid shots up the stairwell. The two lead guards fell backward onto the boathouse floor. Enzo grabbed Harper by her tactical vest, pulling her low beneath the heavy lip of the iron floor safe as shotgun rounds chewed into the concrete wall above their heads.
“Cover your eyes!” Enzo yelled over the gunfire.
He leaned out from behind the safe, firing with surgical precision. The third guard dropped.
Preston, terrified and blinded by the smoke, scrambled backward up the stairs, screaming for his driver.
Enzo bounded up the iron stairs two at a time, Harper right on his heels.
They emerged into the burning, ruined boathouse. The roof was collapsed, black smoke billowing into the freezing night sky. Outside, the sound of heavy automatic gunfire rang out as Salvatore and Frankie’s men engaged the remainder of Preston’s private security detail.
Preston was stumbling across the snow toward his dark sedan parked near the main drive, bleeding from a shrapnel wound on his arm, dropping his gun into the drift.
Enzo walked out of the burning structure into the snow. He didn't run. He walked with the heavy, deliberate pace of a grim reaper collecting an overdue bill.
“Enzo!” Preston shrieked, turning around, slipping on the ice, falling hard onto his back in the deep snow. “Wait! Wait! We can talk! The money... the offshore accounts... I’ll give you the passcodes! All forty million!”
Enzo stopped three feet from where Preston lay squirming in the snow. He leveled his Sig Sauer directly at the center of Preston’s forehead.
“I don't want your money, Preston,” Enzo said softly. “Nathan’s soul costs more than forty million.”
Preston looked past Enzo, his eyes finding Harper, who stood ten feet behind her husband, her face illuminated by the roaring flames of the boathouse.
“Harper!” Preston begged, tears streaming down his bruised face. “Tell him! Tell him to stop! I’m your father! I gave you everything! The house, the clothes, the life!”
Harper walked forward slowly until she stood beside Enzo. She looked down at the man who had terrorized her childhood, the man who had left scars on her back that would last forever.
She didn't feel rage anymore. She didn't feel fear. She felt only a deep, clean silence.
“You didn't give me a life, Preston,” Harper said quietly. “You gave me a nightmare. And my husband is waking me up.”
Preston’s eyes went wide with terror as he realized his daughter was not going to save him.
Enzo looked at Harper. “Turn around, baby.”
Harper didn't look away. She kept her eyes fixed on her father’s face.
May you like
“No,” she said firmly. “I want to watch.”
Enzo squeezed the trigger.
