Chapter 8 - The Intruder at the Gates
“Leo, listen to me,” I said, turning away from the monitor and gripping his shoulders. “I need you to stay in here with Mia. Lock this door from the inside using the keypad. Do not open it for anyone—not even if you hear my voice—until your dad or I come back with the master code.”
“Where are you going?” Leo asked, his eyes wide with terror. “Clara, don't leave us!”
“I have to get something,” I said, my heart hammering against my ribs like a caged bird. “I’ll be right back. I promise.”
I slammed the panic room door shut, hearing the heavy automated bolts slide into place with a definitive clunk.
I crept out of the nursery into the dimly lit hallway. The smoke from a flashbang grenade drifted up the stairwell, carrying the acrid scent of sulfur and burnt rubber. Gunfire echoed from the ground floor, but upstairs, the house was chillingly quiet.
Footsteps crunched on the third-floor hardwood.
I ducked behind a heavy mahogany linen chest just as two men in dark suits stepped out of the stairwell. One of them carried a thermal breaching charge; the other held a suppressed pistol.
“The trunk room is at the end of the hall,” the first man whispered. “Sterling’s security is tied up on the lawn. Grab the box and get out.”
They moved toward the end of the corridor—straight toward the room containing the secrets of my past.
If they got that box, whatever link connected Elena Sterling to an orphanage in Queens—whatever truth Dante was hiding—would be gone forever. And my life, already hanging by a thread, would be tied to a conspiracy I didn't understand.
I couldn't let them take it.
I slipped out from behind the linen chest and grabbed a heavy brass floor lamp standing near the corridor wall. It weighed at least twenty pounds.
The men reached the trunk room door and attached the thermal charge.
“Fire in the hole,” the lead man muttered, reaching for his detonator.
“Hey!” I shouted.
The man spun around, his pistol raising instantly.
I didn't think. I hoisted the heavy brass lamp and hurled it like a javelin down the hallway. It caught the second man squarely in the chest, knocking him backward into the wall with a heavy thud. The detonator slipped from the lead man’s hand and clattered across the floor.
Before he could recover, I lunged forward, tackling him around the waist just as he raised his sidearm.
We crashed hard onto the hardwood floor. The pistol went flying, sliding across the polished boards into the shadows. The man cursed, throwing an elbow that caught me in the ribs, knocking the wind from my lungs. He rolled on top of me, his heavy hands gripping my throat.
“Stupid bitch,” he snarled, pressing his thumbs into my windpipe.
My vision began to blur at the edges. Air refused to enter my lungs. I clawed at his wrists, my fingers slipping against his suit fabric.
Then, a deafening roar echoed down the hallway.
The man’s body suddenly went completely limp. He slumped sideways, collapsing heavily across my chest, blood pooling from a clean entry wound in his shoulder.
Beyond him stood Dante Sterling.
His chest was heaving, his face streaked with soot and sweat, and his tactical rifle still raised and smoking.
He dropped to his knees, hauled the unconscious intruder off my body with one hand, and grabbed my shoulders, pulling me upright.
“Are you out of your goddamned mind?!” Dante roared, his voice shaking with a terrifying fury that masked sheer panic. “What were you doing out of the panic room?!”
“They... they were going for the box,” I gasped, coughing as I sucked air back into my burning lungs.
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Dante stared down at me, his obsidian eyes wide with disbelief, anger, and something dangerously close to awe. He hoisted me to my feet, his grip gentle despite his rough words.
“The perimeter is secure,” Dante said, his voice dropping into a cold, hard ledger. “The local police are en route. But we need to leave. Now.”
