Chapter 6 - The Ambush at Midnight
Matteo did not use the elevator. He had taken the service stairwell from the seventy-ninth floor, clearing three flights of concrete stairs in thirty seconds, his body running on pure, uncut adrenaline.
When the heavy fire-door slammed open against the wall, Matteo saw the scene framed in the doorway of the Blue Room like an oil painting of hell:
A man on the floor bleeding from the face. Another man leveling a suppressed pistol toward Elena. And his uncle Julian reaching down into Leah’s crib.
Matteo didn't shout a warning. He raised his Glock and fired two rounds into the center chest of the armed mercenary.
The suppressed thuds of the heavy 9mm rounds sounded like wet claps against drywall. The man was lifted off his feet by the kinetic impact, slamming against the cedar closet before sliding down onto the floor, leaving a smear of dark crimson along the white paneling.
The first mercenary, his face covered in blood and glass shards, lunged blindly toward Matteo with a combat knife.
Matteo didn't even blink. He stepped inside the man's reach, caught his wrist with his left hand, twisted it violently until the radius snapped with a wet pop, and drove the heavy steel slide of his pistol into the man’s temple. The mercenary collapsed like a puppet with its strings severed.
Matteo turned his weapon directly onto Julian Duca.
The room went dead silent, save for the rhythmic, mechanical hum of the perfusion pump and Leah’s quiet, frightened whimpering from the crib.
Julian stood frozen, his hand still hovering six inches above the crib railing. His face had turned the color of curdled milk.
“Matteo,” Julian whispered, holding his empty hands up at shoulder level. “Matteo, wait. You don't understand the full picture here. Put the gun down. Think about your daughter.”
Matteo walked forward. His boots crunched over the shattered glass on the floor. His eyes were completely black, dilated with an absolute, homicidal fury that no board meeting, no corporate negotiation, and no family loyalty could ever temper.
“Step away from the crib, Julian,” Matteo said. The gun did not waver an inch. It was pointed directly between Julian’s eyebrows.
“Matteo, she lied to you!” Julian said, his voice rising in pitch, cracking with the desperation of a cornered rat. “Elena and your mother! They orchestrated this entire disappearance to frame me! They wanted to cut me out of the pharmaceutical restructuring! Look at her! She’s been living in luxury while you were rotting in your own grief!”
“Shut up,” Matteo said.
Elena stepped out from behind the vanity, her hands trembling as she lifted Leah from the crib and clutched the crying child tightly against her chest. Leah buried her face in Elena’s neck, her small fingers knotting into the fabric of her mother’s sweater.
“Mommy... Daddy...” Leah cried softly.
Matteo’s eyes flickered to Elena for a fraction of a second. The sight of his wife holding their daughter—alive, whole, real—was a physical blow that nearly dropped him to his knees. But the gun never moved.
“Mara!” Matteo called out without looking back.
Mara appeared in the doorway, her sidearm drawn, sweeping the corridor. Caterina stood behind her, her silver cane tapping hard against the floor, her chest heaving from the climb.
“The perimeter is secure,” Mara reported sharply. “Julian’s driver and two lookout units in the lobby have been disarmed and zip-tied by the building security team. The local precinct has been alerted—not through dispatch, but directly through the commissioner’s personal line. They are four minutes out.”
Julian’s eyes darted toward the window, then back to Matteo’s gun.
“You think this ends here, nephew?” Julian hissed, his teeth bared in a bitter, venomous snarl. “The federal warrants are already signed! Dr. Vance’s death will be linked to your security detail! You will be stripped of everything! The Duca name will be dragged through every courtroom in this country!”
“Dr. Vance isn't dead, Julian,” Caterina’s voice cut through the room like a razor blade.
Julian froze.
Caterina stepped into the nursery, stepping over the fallen mercenary without even glancing down. She pulled a small digital audio recorder from her pocket and tossed it onto the glass table.
“Dr. Vance was moved to a safe location three hours ago,” Caterina said, her face set in stone. “The man your thugs ran off the road outside the dispensary was an off-duty state trooper driving Vance’s decoy vehicle. Vance is currently sitting in the Southern District U.S. Attorney’s office, signing a complete confession regarding the forged toxicology reports, the synthetic VX-9 synthesis, and the six offshore accounts you used to launder the European consortium's advance payments.”
Julian’s knees visibly buckled. The walking stick slipped from his grasp, clattering loudly against the hardwood floor.
“You... you old witch,” Julian whispered.
“I am a mother,” Caterina said quietly, her eyes burning with pure, unadulterated ice. “And you made the fatal mistake of threatening my blood.”
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The distant wail of police sirens began to echo up from the avenue eighty stories below, cutting through the heavy rain.
***