Chapter 4 - The Poison and the Flame
Emma didn't scream. She didn't panic.
Years of surviving the sudden, devastating loss of her own daughter had forged a core of absolute, unbreakable steel inside her soul.
She crept quietly back down the hallway, slipped into the nursery, and locked the heavy oak doors from the inside.
She ran to the private kitchenette inside her suite, grabbed a fresh bottle of organic saline solution and warm purified water she had personally brought from her own stock, and began gently flushing the infants' mouths and giving them tiny sips of clean fluid to counteract the ingested toxin.
Then she pulled out her phone and dialed Gabriel’s private encrypted line.
It went straight to voicemail—Frank’s team had deliberately jammed the cellular signals surrounding the estate’s main perimeter.
Emma looked at the clock on the wall: 10:45 PM.
"You picked the wrong mother to mess with," Emma whispered, her eyes burning with a fierce, terrifying maternal rage.
She grabbed a heavy leather diaper bag, packed fresh clothes, clean water, and wrapped both Anthony and Lucia tightly against her chest in a double sling wrap, securing them beneath her thick winter coat.
She walked over to the nursery window overlooking the back gardens.
The rain was pouring down in sheets, lightning flashing across the Long Island sky. The fire escape ladder descended three stories down toward the servant's courtyard.
Without a second thought, Emma unlatched the window, stepped out into the freezing storm, and began descending the slippery iron ladder, holding her arms tightly around the two infants tucked safely against her heartbeat.
Halfway down the ladder, the nursery door inside was violently kicked open.
"She’s gone!" Nurse Sarah’s shriek echoed through the open window above. "The babies are gone!"
Red security lights instantly flashed across the estate grounds as alarm sirens blared through the night air.
Emma hit the ground running.
She cut through the dark, rain-soaked hedge mazes, her secondhand shoes sliding over the muddy grass, her lungs burning like fire. She knew the perimeter gates were locked down by Frank’s armed guards, but during her afternoon walks, she had noticed an old, rusted service gate near the estate’s former greenhouse—a gate she had seen a groundskeeper unlock with an old brass key hanging inside the tool shed.
Emma sprinted into the dark greenhouse, retrieved the key, and threw open the rusted iron gate, stepping out onto the dark, country backroad of Old Westbury.
She didn't stop running until she reached a small, gas station three blocks away.
She burst through the front door, soaked in rain, mud on her dress, but holding her two infants warm, dry, and safe beneath her coat.
The young clerk behind the counter gasped in horror. "Lady! Are you okay?! Do you need me to call 911?!"
"No," Emma gasped, pulling a hundred-dollar bill from her pocket and laying it on the counter. "I need your landline phone. Right now."
Ten minutes later, on the Manhattan-bound highway, Gabriel’s armored vehicle was suddenly cut off by three black SUVs driven by his loyal elite guard, led by his trusted right-hand lieutenant, Marco.
Marco threw the car door open, holding a tablet screen displaying a secure emergency transmission from the gas station.
"Don Moretti!" Marco shouted above the roar of the rain. "It’s Ms. Brooks! She escaped the estate on foot with the twins! She says Julian and Frank poisoned the babies' water supply!"
Gabriel’s eyes went completely wild with atomic, lethal fury.
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He pulled a heavy black firearm from his shoulder holster, his voice dropping into a tone that chilled the air inside the limousine.
"Turn the cars around," Gabriel commanded, his dark eyes burning with absolute death. "We are going home."
