Chapter 6 - The Breach
The sudden darkness was absolute. The only light remaining in the study came from the pale white reflection of the snowstorm outside the large windows.
I gasped, instinctively freezing in my chair.
Before panic could take hold of me, a strong, warm hand clamped firmly around my left wrist. Luca moved with terrifying speed in the dark, pulling me up from the chair and drawing me behind his massive frame.
"Stay quiet," Luca whispered directly into my ear, his breath warm against my skin. "Don't move from my side."
From his shoulder holster, Luca drew a sleek, black semi-automatic pistol. The metallic clack of the slide racking in the quiet room sounded lethal.
He tapped a small button on his wrist comms. "Mario. Report."
"Boss, they have night-vision gear," Mario’s voice crackled through the ear piece, accompanied by the muffled sound of distant gunfire echoing outside through the pine trees. "It's a Bellini strike team. At least twelve men. They're advancing toward the main terrace!"
"Lock down the lower levels," Luca commanded coldly. "Hold them at the courtyard. I am securing my family."
Luca turned back to me in the dim moonlight. His eyes burned with an intense, terrifying focus.
"Emma. We need to get Matteo into the panic room beneath the master suite."
"Okay," I whispered, my voice shaking, but my determination solidifying instantly. "Lead the way."
We slipped quietly out of the study and moved down the dark corridor toward Matteo's room. The lakehouse, which had felt so warm and welcoming hours ago, now felt like a dark, echoing maze. Outside, the sharp pop-pop-pop of suppressed gunfire shattered the quiet of the Wisconsin wilderness.
We reached Matteo’s room. Luca pushed the door open silently.
The four-year-old was awake, sitting up in his bed, clutching his stuffed dinosaur in the dark. "Emma? Daddy?"
"I'm here, sweetie," I whispered, rushing to his bedside, wrapping my left arm around him and lifting him out of the crib. He buried his small face into my neck, trembling softly.
"Good girl," Luca murmured, guiding us out of the room toward the master suite at the far end of the hall.
Suddenly, a loud explosion rocked the lower level of the house. The heavy glass doors of the ground-floor living room shattered in a cascade of noise. Footsteps—heavy, tactical boots—thundered into the foyer below.
"Clear the ground floor!" a harsh, accented voice shouted from downstairs. "Find the girl and the kid! Bellini wants them brought to the docks!"
Luca stopped dead in his tracks outside the master suite doors.
He looked at me, then at his son clinging to my neck. He reached out, his hand grasping the back of my neck, pulling my face close to his.
"Listen to me, Emma," Luca whispered urgently, his dark eyes locking onto mine with fierce intensity. "The panic room is behind the wardrobe inside my bedroom. The code is 0-4-1-2. The date Matteo was born. Get inside. Lock it from the interior. Do not open it for anyone except me or Mario. Do you understand?"
"What about you?" I gasped, horror gripping my chest. "You're going down there alone?"
Luca gave a dark, lethal smile that chilled me to the bone.
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"They came into my house while my son and the woman I love are under my roof," Luca whispered, his voice dripping with terrifying vengeance. "They aren't going to leave these woods alive."
Before I could speak, he pushed me inside the master bedroom, closed the heavy double doors behind us, and turned back toward the stairs to face the invading army alone.
