The Mafia Boss Found His Maid Crying in the Kitchen at 3 A.M. — Then She Revealed the Enemy Was Living Under His Own Roof.
PART 5
By the time she reached the estate, the front gates were on fire.
Sirens screamed somewhere past the woods, but two abandoned trucks blocked the road. Gunfire cracked across the property. Smoke poured from shattered first-floor windows.
Her driver stomped the brakes. “Lady, I’m not going closer.”
“This is close enough.”
She was out of the car before he could argue, running low along the stone wall toward the staff entrance, the winter air cutting through her coat.
A wounded guard lay near the service road, a hand pressed to his bleeding shoulder.
“Where’s Dante?” she asked, dropping beside him.
“Second floor. Kane opened the west entrance. They’re after the server room.”
“Can you walk?”
“Not far.”
She pressed her phone into his hand. “Police are coming. Tell them the main road’s blocked.”
“You can’t go in there.”
“I know the building.”
“You’ll get killed.”
She looked at the flames reflected in the windows. “Then tell them to hurry.”
She slipped through the laundry passage. The house she’d once crossed with a cleaning cart had become a battlefield — sprinklers pouring from the ceiling, broken glass across the marble, smoke stinging her eyes, gunshots somewhere down a corridor followed by a silence too heavy to be good news.
She found Elias in the linen closet off the east stairwell, glasses cracked, crouched behind a stack of towels.
“Thank God,” he breathed.
“Where’s Dante?”
“Went after Kane.”
“Did Kane get the records?”
“Some. Not the encrypted copies.”
She held up the drive. Elias stared at it in horror. “You brought that here?”
“I didn’t know where else to take it.”
“You were supposed to leave the county.”
“He was supposed to answer his phone.”
Gunfire shook the walls. “Panic room’s behind the fireplace in the main bedroom,” Elias said. “Go.”
“Not without him.”
“Sienna—”
“You know I’m not doing that.”
She slipped into the east stairwell. At the second-floor landing, a man in tactical black stepped through the smoke, weapon rising. She ducked. A shot cracked and he dropped.
Dante stood at the far end of the hall, pistol in hand, the left side of his shirt soaked dark.
For one second, neither of them moved. Then his face twisted into fury.
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“I told you to stay away.”
“You told me to use the device. It went off.”
“It was warning you to run.”
“Pick a clearer signal next time.”
A shot struck the wall above them. He crossed the hallway, hauled her behind a stone pillar, hands moving fast over her shoulders and arms.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. You’re bleeding.”
“Passed through.”
“That doesn’t make it decorative.”
Even mid-chaos, disbelief flickered across his face. “You came into a gunfight to insult me?”
“I came to make sure you lived long enough to be insulted.”
A door slammed below. He took her hand. “We’re moving.”
They ran through the smoke-thick corridor, his pace slowing, blood dripping onto the carpet. In the main bedroom he locked the door, dropped a steel bar across it, then pressed a hidden sequence into the fireplace carving. A stone panel swung open onto a narrow concrete passage.
“Get inside.”
“You first.”
“I need to coordinate the rest of the team.”
“You need to stop bleeding.”
“Sienna.”
“I’m not letting you lock me in there while you die out here.”
The door shook, someone ramming it from the hall. He grabbed her waist; she caught his lapels.
“You told me this life wouldn’t get gentler,” she said. “You told me I was standing in the blast radius. You don’t get to shove me out of it now.”
The door cracked near the frame. He pulled her into the passage and followed, the panel sealing shut just as gunfire tore through the bedroom door behind them.