Chapter 5 - The Ambush
The rain outside intensified, thunder shaking the skyscraper glass as Adrian’s security detail moved into high alert.
"Sophie, you're staying in my private quarters behind the office," Adrian commanded, grabbing her by the arm and leading her toward a hidden door disguised as a bookshelf. "The glass is bulletproof, the door is reinforced steel. No one gets in without my voice print."
"No!" Sophie protested, pulling back. "I'm not hiding in a room like a victim while people are outside pointing guns! If this man is after me because of something that happened at Bell & Finch, I need to know what's going on!"
"Listen to me!" Adrian snapped, grasping both of her shoulders tightly. His dark eyes flared with a desperate intensity she had never seen before. "Dominick Moretti is a monster. He doesn't negotiate, he doesn't compromise. If he gets his hands on you, he will use you to destroy everything I have built—and he will kill you the moment he is done."
"Why do you care so much?!" Sophie yelled back, her chest heaving. "I'm just a waitress you hired a week ago!"
Adrian stared at her, the tension between them stretched to a breaking point. For a second, it seemed like he was about to spill the secret—about Victor Ellis, about Evelyn, about the debt he owed her family. But he forced the truth back down into his chest.
"Because you are mine to protect," Adrian said, his voice dropping to a fierce, dangerous whisper. "And I don't lose what is mine."
Before she could process his words, a deafening explosion rocked the lower floors of the building. The lights flickered and died, plunging the penthouse into pitch-black shadow before emergency red lights kicked on, casting an eerie glow over the room.
"They're in the building," Marcus shouted, drawing a silenced pistol from his shoulder holster. "They cut the main power lines and disabled the elevators! They're coming up the service stairs!"
"Get her into the safe room now!" Adrian ordered.
Suddenly, the heavy glass windows on the south side of the penthouse shattered inward in a rain of deadly shards. Flashbang grenades bounced across the hardwood floor.
BANG! BANG!
Blinding light and deafening sound exploded in the room. Sophie gasped, falling to her knees, her vision swimming in white spots as ringing filled her ears.
Through the chaos, black-clad tactical figures dropped from ropes suspended from helicopters outside. Automatic gunfire tore through the air, splintering furniture and shredding oil paintings.
Adrian moved with terrifying speed. Drawing a weapon from beneath his jacket, he fired three precise shots, dropping two attackers instantly. He lunged across the floor, grabbing Sophie by the waist and pulling her behind his heavy mahogany desk just as a spray of bullets riddled the wall where she had been standing seconds before.
"Stay down!" Adrian roared over the gunfire.
"Adrian!" she screamed, holding her hands over her ears.
A loud, mocking laugh echoed through the smoke-filled office.
"Adrian! Come out, come out, little bird!" a harsh, raspy voice shouted from the doorway.
A man in a leather trench coat stepped into the penthouse, flanked by four heavily armed mercenaries. Dominick Moretti. He was older, with a jagged scar running from his ear down to his collarbone, his eyes yellowed and full of malice.
"You're getting soft, Vale," Moretti sneered, pointing a gold-plated revolver toward the desk. "Risking your entire operation for a little blonde girl who serves soup? Word on the street is you've gone soft. I had to see it for myself."
Adrian stood up slowly from behind the desk, holding his hands at chest height, his gun lowered. "Moretti. This is between you and me. Let the girl walk. She has nothing to do with our business."
"Oh, but she does," Moretti grinned, his teeth stained with tobacco. "She's the only thing that's made you bleed in ten years. Grab her!"
Two mercenaries moved toward the desk.
Sophie, acting on sheer instinct and adrenaline, grabbed a heavy bronze bust of Beethoven resting on the lower shelf of the desk. As the first guard rounded the corner, she swung it with all her strength, smashing him directly in the face. The man crumpled to the floor.
"Get off me!" she yelled.
"Bitch!" the second guard snarled, raising his rifle.
Adrian didn't hesitate. He raised his pistol and fired once, striking the guard through the throat.
In the ensuing chaos, Adrian grabbed Sophie’s hand. "Run!"
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They sprinted toward the private executive elevator behind the desk. Adrian slammed his palm against the biometric scanner. The heavy steel doors slid open. He shoved Sophie inside and stepped in after her, punching the code for the underground parking garage just as Moretti’s men opened fire on the closing doors.
The elevator plunged into darkness.