Chapter 8 - The Night They Came
The attack lasted less than three minutes.
It felt like a lifetime.
Vincent pushed me beneath the metal table as officers rushed through the darkened hallway. Emergency lights flashed red. Someone shouted. Someone else screamed.
Lorenzo was already moving.
Not away from danger.
Toward it.
“Stay with her,” Vincent ordered one of the detectives.
Then he followed Lorenzo into the corridor.
I hated them both for leaving.
I understood why.
But I hated them.
Because Emma was at the estate.
Isabella was at the estate.
And a man named Rafael Sanz had just turned off the lights to prove he could reach us anywhere.
Twenty minutes later, we were in armored vehicles headed back to Long Island.
Lorenzo sat across from me, blood on his shirt.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“It isn’t mine.”
That did not help.
He held a phone in his hand, watching the estate cameras. Vincent had ordered a full lockdown.
The gates were sealed.
Every room was checked.
Isabella and Emma were in the panic suite beneath the main house with Mrs. Alvarez, Dr. Patel, and four guards.
Then the screen went black.
My heart stopped.
“No,” I whispered.
Lorenzo’s head snapped up.
The camera feed returned.
For seven seconds, all we could see was static.
Then Vincent’s voice came through the car radio.
“Boss. We have a breach at the west gate.”
Lorenzo’s expression changed into something terrifying.
Not panic.
Purpose.
The convoy sped through the storm.
By the time we reached the estate, rain had turned to sleet. Armed guards moved across the grounds. Searchlights cut through the darkness.
Inside, Mrs. Alvarez was crying.
Emma and Isabella were alive.
But the panic suite door had been unlocked from the outside.
Someone inside the estate had given Rafael access.
Vincent found the traitor in the wine cellar.
One of the newer guards.
Dead.
A single gunshot wound.
Rafael had silenced him after using him.
Lorenzo stood in the center of the foyer, soaked from the rain, listening to Vincent’s report.
Then Emma came running down the stairs.
“Mama!”
I dropped to my knees and caught her.
She was trembling.
“I heard loud bangs.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
“Bella was scared.”
“I know.”
Isabella stood behind her, holding Mr. Moon.
She had given Emma her own stuffed bear in exchange.
Lorenzo saw it.
His face broke for one second.
Then he walked to Isabella and lifted her into his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She touched the blood on his collar.
“Daddy, are you hurt?”
“No.”
“You promise?”
He looked at her.
“I promise.”
That night, nobody slept.
Lorenzo moved Emma and me into the secure family wing—not as prisoners, he said, but because there were no safe places left until Rafael was found.
I wanted to argue.
Then Emma had a nightmare.
She woke gasping, clutching her chest.
Dr. Patel checked her immediately.
Stress-induced tachycardia.
Not dangerous yet.
But close enough to make my knees weak.
Lorenzo stood outside the bedroom door, listening.
When Dr. Patel finally said Emma would be okay, Lorenzo slid down against the hallway wall.
I found him there an hour later.
He was holding Isabella’s old baby blanket.
“I failed them,” he said.
“You didn’t bring Rafael here.”
“I brought that world here.”
I sat beside him.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Then he looked at me.
“I can send you away. New identity. New city. Protection. Whatever you need.”
“And Isabella?”
“She stays with me.”
“Then Rafael still has leverage.”
His jaw clenched.
“Yes.”
I looked through the bedroom door.
Emma and Isabella were sleeping in the same bed, holding hands.
Two little girls with fragile hearts.
Two children caught in wars they did not understand.
“We don’t run separately,” I said.
Lorenzo stared at me.
“We end this together.”
At dawn, Vincent came in carrying a phone.
“We found Rafael’s location,” he said.
“Where?” Lorenzo asked.
Vincent looked at the screen.
Then at the children asleep upstairs.
“The old Duca shipping warehouse in Red Hook.”
Lorenzo’s face hardened.
“That place has been empty for ten years.”
“Not anymore,” Vincent said.
The phone rang.
Lorenzo answered.
Rafael’s voice came through, calm and warm.
May you like
“Bring Sophia Marino to the warehouse by noon,” he said. “Or Isabella’s medication disappears again.”
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