Chapter 5: Siege of Blackwood Manor

The encrypted drive is heavy in my palm. Cosimo, my loyal consigliere, delivered it an hour ago under the cover of the storm. The uncorrupted backup drive. The four minutes of video Vincent thought he wiped from existence. The digital ghost of my dead wife, waiting to scream the truth to the Five Families.

But Vincent knows his thugs failed. He knows I am coming for him.

The heavy thunk of the main breakers shutting down echoes through the manor. The emergency lights flicker on, casting long, bloody shadows across the walls. The phone lines are dead. Cell service is jammed. We are cut off.

“He’s here,” I say, loading a fresh magazine into my rifle.

Sophia stands beside me in the dim light of the corridor, holding Emma tightly. Noah is gripping Sophia’s leg, his eyes wide but no longer glazed with terror. He is present. He is watching me.

“Take them to the library vault,” I tell Sophia, my voice calm, stripping away the rage and leaving only the cold precision of a soldier protecting his home. “The door is titanium-reinforced. Once you spin the lock, nothing short of C-4 will get through. Do not open it for anyone but me.”

Sophia nods, her jaw set. She leans up and kisses me, a desperate, fierce press of her lips against mine. “Come back to us, Dante. Promise me.”

“I swear it,” I whisper.

I watch her usher the children into the vault, the heavy steel door thudding shut behind them with a definitive clang. The spin of the lock is the last sound I hear before I turn my back on the bunker. For six years, I hid behind glass and monitors. Tonight, I step into the darkness.

Vincent didn’t send street thugs this time. He brought a mercenary strike team. Men with night vision and suppressed submachine guns. I hear their tactical boots padding through the west wing. They are moving with military precision, clearing room by room.

They expect a mob boss. They expect me to be cowering in my security center, surrounded by bodyguards.

They don’t expect a father with nothing left to lose.

I slip through the servant passageways, knowing every blind spot, every creaking floorboard of Blackwood Manor. I am a phantom in my own home.

The first two mercenaries die in the dining room, my knife finding the gap in their body armor before they even realize the shadows have teeth. I take their weapons, moving silently up the grand staircase.

Three more men fall in the east corridor, caught in a crossfire I create using the manor’s heavy bronze mirrors to bounce laser sights and confuse their optics. The smell of cordite and copper replaces the scent of bergamot.

By the time I reach the grand foyer, the strike team is decimated.

The massive double doors at the front of the manor are blown open, rain and wind sweeping over the marble floors. Standing at the base of the staircase, illuminated by the flashes of lightning, is Uncle Vincent.

He is alone. He holds a heavy revolver, his face twisted in a snarl of desperation.

“It didn’t have to be this way, Dante!” Vincent shouts over the storm, aiming the gun at my chest. “You were like a son to me! If Isabella had just kept her mouth shut, we could have ruled the city together!”

I step out of the shadows, the backup drive secured in my vest, my rifle lowered. I don’t need a weapon to kill this man. I only need the truth.

But as Vincent pulls back the hammer of his revolver, a pair of headlights cuts through the darkness outside, followed by the blare of sirens. The council. The marshals. They received the distress signal I had Cosimo rig to trigger the moment the manor’s power was cut.

Vincent turns, panic flashing in his eyes. He realizes the trap hasn’t closed on me—it has closed on him…