Chapter 6 - The Breach at Midnight
At 12:15 p.m., the sky above the Cross Estate opened up into a torrential downpour. Thunder rumbled across the lake, drowning out the soft, mechanical hum of the estate’s security systems.
At the south garden gate, the red infrared indicator light flickered twice... then turned a steady, inviting green.
Two dark, unmarked delivery vans backed quietly down the narrow access lane, pushing through the heavy iron gates and parking behind the overgrown rosebushes.
Eighteen men dressed in black tactical uniforms, holding short-barreled automatic rifles, poured out of the back of the vehicles. Leading them was a tall, scarred mercenary named Kovak—Lorenzo Moretti’s chief enforcer.
Frank Sterling stepped out from behind the stone garden archway, holding an umbrella, a cold smirk on his face.
“You’re late, Kovak,” Frank said over the sound of the falling rain.
“The weather is trash,” Kovak spat, wiping rainwater from his scarred cheek. “Where is the girl?”
“East Wing. First floor. Her mother is in the room with her,” Frank pointed toward the heavy glass French doors fifty yards away. “My twelve guards on duty have been ordered to stay in the security barracks on the west side of the property. The house is empty.”
“And Cross?” Kovak asked, checking his rifle’s sight.
“By now, Moretti’s team at Pier 42 has turned his motorcade into Swiss cheese,” Frank lied smoothly, completely unaware that his outer team was already dead. “Damian Cross is fish food in Lake Michigan.”
Kovak grinned, showing a mouthful of yellowed teeth. “Good. Let's get the kid, grab the hard drives from his study, and burn this place to the ground.”
Inside the East Wing guest suite, Hannah Reed sat on the edge of the bed, holding three-year-old Ellie tightly in her arms.
The heavy blackout curtains were drawn, and the room was lit only by a single warm nightlight. Hannah was terrified, her heart hammering against her ribs, but she remembered Damian’s strict instructions before he had slipped down to the cellar an hour ago.
“No matter what you hear upstairs, stay in the bathroom behind the steel door. Lock it from the inside. I will come for you when it is over.”
Suddenly, the heavy glass French doors leading to the garden shattered inward in a shower of lethal fragments.
CRASH!
Kovak and four mercenaries burst into the room, their weapons raised, boots crushing glass against the hardwood floor.
Hannah screamed, pulling Ellie beneath her body on the bed.
“Grab the child!” Kovak barked.
Two mercenaries stepped forward, reaching out with gloved hands for Ellie.
Before their fingers could touch the blanket, the heavy oak bathroom door behind Kovak swung open with explosive force.
BOOM!
A blinding flashbang grenade detonated in the center of the bedroom, filling the space with a deafening roar and brilliant white light.
Kovak and his men were instantly disoriented, clutching their ears and stumbling backward, blinded and screaming in pain.
Through the thick smoke, a tall silhouette stepped out from the doorway.
Damian Cross did not speak. He did not issue a warning.
With terrifying, fluid speed, Damian fired two shots from his heavy 12-gauge shotgun. The two mercenaries reaching for the bed were thrown backward onto the shattered glass patio, dead before they hit the ground.
Damian racked the shotgun with a lethal metallic slide, turned, and fired a third round through the bathroom wall, catching a third mercenary attempting to raise his weapon through the smoke.
Kovak, blinded and bleeding from his ears, scrambled backward through the broken French doors, falling onto the wet grass outside.
“RETREAT! RETREAT!” Kovak shrieked into his radio. “IT’S A TRAP! CROSS IS ALIVE!”
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Inside the room, Damian immediately stepped to the bed, picking up Hannah and Ellie in one massive arm, shielding them with his own body as automatic gunfire from the garden began to tear through the bedroom walls.
“To the cellar!” Damian commanded, guiding them swiftly out into the main corridor as plaster and wood splinters rained down around them. “NOW!”
