Chapter 8 - THE SIEGE OF ESTATE ROSSI
"Don Matteo!" Marco’s voice cracked through my tactical earpiece. "We have multiple vehicles breaching the outer gates! Four black SUVs! They just rammed through the security checkpoint!"
I didn't panic. Blood rushed through my veins, cold and steady.
"Who is it?" I asked, pulling my Kimber .45 from my leather shoulder holster.
"Apex Securities!" Marco reported over the gunfire echoing from the driveway. "Heavy tactical gear! Automatic rifles! They're burning through the yard guards!"
Julian’s partners.
When Julian failed to report back after our 10:00 AM meeting, his corporate backers at Apex Pharmaceuticals realized the operation had been compromised. They were sending a strike team to wipe out the estate, eliminate the evidence, and leave no witnesses behind.
"Sophia," I said, grabbing her by the shoulders and shoving her toward the reinforced panic room behind the study library. "Take Emma and Isabella inside the safe room. Lock the steel door from the inside. Do not open it for anyone except me. Do you understand?"
"Don Matteo, please be careful!" Sophia cried, grabbing Isabella in her left arm and leading Emma with her right.
"This is my house," I replied, a dark, wicked smile curling my lips. "They came to the wrong graveyard."
I slammed the heavy steel panic room door shut, turning three mechanical deadbolts.
Two seconds later, the high double glass doors of the main courtyard shattered into ten thousand glittering pieces.
Six tactical mercenaries dressed in black body armor and night-vision helmets burst through the smoke, carrying silenced MP5 submachine guns.
"Clear the foyer!" their team leader shouted. "Find the girl and the maid! Burn the main study!"
"Looking for me?" my voice echoed from the top of the grand marble staircase.
The mercenaries spun around, raising their weapons, but before they could squeeze their triggers, the heavy oak panels along the hallway walls slid open.
Ten of my elite Rossi house guards—men who had fought alongside me in the turf wars of Brooklyn—appeared on the second-story balconies, heavy assault rifles already aimed down.
"Fire," I commanded softly.
A wall of lead erupted from the upper floor. The deafening roar of automatic gunfire filled the grand foyer. Muzzle flashes lit up the dark marble like lightning strikes in a storm.
The mercenaries had expected an unprepared mafia boss cowering in his bedroom. Instead, they had walked straight into a kill-box designed by a man who had survived three decades of cartel warfare.
Within ninety seconds, all six mercenaries lay motionless on the blood-stained marble floor.
I walked down the grand staircase, my leather boots stepping over the spent brass shell casings. I kicked the team leader’s rifle away, stepping on his chest until he groaned.
I reached down, yanked off his helmet, and pulled a encrypted radio from his tactical vest.
May you like
I pressed the transmit button.
"This is Don Matteo Rossi," I said into the microphone, my voice echoing across the silent foyer. "Tell your CEO that his strike team is dead. And tell him... I'm coming to his office for my refund."
