Chapter 6 - The Breach
The attack came thirty-six hours later, on a moonless Friday night.
It wasn't a warning this time. It was war.
Dominic had been summoned to Brooklyn on an urgent intelligence leak—a trap carefully orchestrated by the Moretti syndicate to draw the Wolf of Brooklyn away from his stronghold.
Inside the Long Island estate, the storm doors were locked, and the security team was on high alert.
Beatrice was reading The Chronicles of Narnia to Leo in the second-floor nursery when the lights flickered and died.
The entire mansion plunged into absolute, suffocating darkness, save for the pale green glow of emergency backup strips along the baseboards.
“Bea? The lights went away,” Leo whispered, clutching his stuffed rabbit tightly, his big eyes wide with fear.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Beatrice said, her voice shaking despite her desperate attempt to sound brave. She stood up from the rocking chair, pulling Leo into her arms and clutching him to her chest. “We’re just going to play a game of hide-and-seek in the secure room downstairs. Stay very quiet, okay?”
Before she could reach the nursery door, the heavy oak paneling shattered inward with a deafening explosion.
Splintered wood and white smoke filled the hallway.
Two masked men in tactical gear, carrying suppressed submachine guns, burst into the room. Their black-clad frames looked terrifying in the dim emergency light.
“Got them,” one of them growled into a comms unit clipped to his collar. “Target secured.”
“Get away from us!” Beatrice screamed, thrusting Leo behind her back, using her own body as a human shield, her heart hammering like a trapped animal.
She lunged for a heavy brass lamp on the side table, hurling it with all her strength at the lead intruder. It struck his shoulder, but the tactical vest absorbed the impact without slowing him down.
The second man stepped forward, raising the butt of his weapon.
“Don't make this harder than it has to be, fat girl,” the intruder sneered, grabbing Beatrice by the arm and wrenching her away from the child.
“Bea!” Leo shrieked as the first man scooped him up into his arms, covering the boy’s mouth with a thick leather glove.
“No! Let him go! Take me instead!” Beatrice cried, fighting tooth and nail, scratching and clawing at the man holding her, but she was overpowered in seconds.
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A sharp, stinging blow struck the back of her head.
Darkness rushed in, swallowing the screaming of the child, the smell of cordite, and the wreckage of the nursery as Beatrice collapsed onto the Persian rug.
