Chapter 7
PART 7
Grace found Noah under his bed with his hands over his ears.
The whole house shook again. Dust drifted from the ceiling. Somewhere downstairs, glass shattered in a bright, violent crash. Automatic gunfire ripped through the night, so loud it seemed to tear the air itself apart.
Noah looked up, face white. “Mommy?”
Grace dropped to her knees. “Shoes. Go bag. Now.”
They had practiced this because Vincent had insisted. Grace had hated him for frightening her son with emergency drills. Now she hated him for being right.
Noah shoved his feet into sneakers while Grace grabbed the backpack from the closet. Inhalers. Water. A flashlight. His medical folder. Cash. A stuffed T. rex Noah refused to abandon.
The hallway outside was chaos.
Red emergency lights pulsed along the walls. Men ran past carrying rifles. Smoke crawled along the ceiling. Teresa stood near the stairwell, pale but steady, ushering two kitchen workers toward the servants’ corridor.
“Cellar,” Grace shouted.
Teresa nodded. “Go!”
Grace gripped Noah’s hand and ran.
They reached the service stairs as bullets punched through a window at the far end of the hall. Wood splintered. A guard spun and fell. Grace shoved Noah ahead of her.
“Do not look back.”
They plunged down the stairs.
The cellar door slammed open before Grace reached it.
Vincent appeared, dragging Ray.
Ray’s shirt was soaked in bright red blood from his shoulder to his waist. His face was the color of paper. Vincent’s own forehead was cut, his jaw smeared with soot, his rifle hanging from a strap across his chest.
“Table,” Vincent ordered.
Grace moved instantly.
She lifted Noah and shoved him beneath the far side of the steel surgical table, pulling a hanging sterile sheet low enough to hide him.
“Stay there,” she told him. “No matter what you hear.”
Noah nodded, shaking.
Vincent hauled Ray onto the table.
“Collarbone,” he said. “Rifle round.”
Grace cut Ray’s shirt open.
Blood welled fast and hard.
“Subclavian nick,” she said, voice dropping into the cold calm of trauma. “Pressure.”
Vincent pressed both hands over the wound.
“Harder.”
“I am.”
“Then be stronger.”
He was.
Grace snapped on gloves, grabbed clamps, and dug her fingers into the wound. Ray groaned, half-conscious.
“Sorry, Ray,” she muttered. “You can yell at me later.”
Above them, the gunfire intensified. Something heavy crashed overhead. Men shouted in Italian and English. The estate, that polished monument to control, was being ripped open room by room.
Grace found the arterial tear by feel.
“Clamp.”
Vincent slapped it into her palm.
She clamped. Blood slowed.
Ray’s pulse fluttered beneath her fingers.
“Saline. Wide open. Left arm.”
Vincent moved without hesitation, hanging the bag, finding tape, handing tubing. He was not graceful, but he listened. For those minutes, he was not a king or killer. He was hands.
The radio on his shoulder crackled.
“Boss, they are in the west hall! Bellandi is inside!”
Vincent went still.
Grace looked up.
“You cannot leave.”
“If they reach this room, everyone dies.”
“Ray dies if I lose pressure.”
Vincent looked from Ray to Grace to the sheet hiding Noah.
His face changed when he realized exactly where her son was.
He pulled a black pistol from his waistband and set it on the tray beside her.
“The door code is eight-one-four. Lock it after me. If anyone but me comes through, aim for the chest and keep firing.”
Grace stared at the gun.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I am a nurse.”
“Tonight you are a mother.”
That struck harder than the gunfire.
Vincent stepped toward her. For one second, he touched Noah’s hidden sheet with two fingers, so lightly the boy might not have felt it.
Then he turned and left.
Grace punched the code into the keypad after him. Three deadbolts slammed into place.
She was sealed underground with a bleeding underboss, a hidden child, and a gun.
For two hours, Grace held the line.
She stabilized Ray with fluids and pressure. She packed the wound with hemostatic gauze, tied temporary tubing, monitored his breathing, and kept one eye on the locked door. Noah did not make a sound. Not once. Grace wanted to crawl under the table with him. Instead, she stood between him and the door with the pistol in both hands.
The sounds above became a nightmare language.
Gunfire. Screams. Running feet. A body hitting the cellar door once, then sliding down the other side. Someone tried the keypad and entered the wrong code. The panel beeped red.
Grace raised the gun.
A man cursed outside.
Metal struck metal.
He was trying to pry the lock.
Grace’s hands stopped shaking.
A cold clarity entered her.
“If you open that door,” she whispered to whoever stood outside, “I will kill you.”
The prying stopped.
Then three shots cracked in the hallway. A body dropped. Silence.
Grace did not lower the gun.
Finally, after what felt like years, the keypad clicked.
Eight. One. Four.
The deadbolts withdrew.
The door opened.
Vincent stood there covered in blood.
For a terrible second, Grace did not know if any of it was his.
His shirt was torn. His knuckles were split. His eyes looked hollow, black with what he had done upstairs. Behind him, smoke curled through the corridor.
Grace kept the gun aimed at his chest.
Vincent did not move.
“It’s me,” he said.
Her finger remained on the trigger.
“Say something only you know.”
His gaze flicked to the sheet beneath the table.
“Noah named the dinosaur Salvatore, then said the name was too serious.”
Grace’s breath broke.
She lowered the gun.
Noah crawled out and ran into her legs. Grace dropped to her knees and wrapped him in both arms.
Vincent stepped inside, shut the door, and leaned back against it like his body had finally remembered it was human. He slid to the floor.
“Bellandi is dead,” he said. “Voss escaped.”
Grace looked at him over Noah’s head.
May you like
The house above them was ruined. Ray was barely alive. The war had taken blood from every wall.
And the traitor was still breathing.
