Chapter 3 - Breaking the Mold
By dawn, the tension in the mansion had shifted from blind panic to cold, calculated preparation. I didn't fire Evelyn. Instead, I moved her out of the guest suite and into the reinforced security quarters down the hall from Grace’s bedroom.
For the next three weeks, my life turned into a war zone of logistics and paranoia. I doubled the patrols around the Lake Forest estate, installed motion-tracking thermal cameras along the perimeter fence, and personally reviewed every background check Marcus could dig up on Evelyn Shaw.
Unsurprisingly, Marcus found nothing. Evelyn Shaw was a ghost—a clean identity layered over a void. But whatever her past, the results in the cellar were undeniable.
I watched from the shadows of the upper balcony as Evelyn put Grace through her morning paces. Gone were the clumsy steps and hesitant reactions. Grace moved with an eerie, predatory grace, relying entirely on acoustic echolocation and tactile feedback. She could track the subtle shift of airflow caused by a footstep, identify a weapon by the distinct click of its safety being flipped, and disarm an opponent twice her size using leverage rather than raw muscle.
“Again,” Evelyn said, tossing a training knife toward a wooden target across the room.
Grace turned her head slightly, caught the faint whistling sound of the blade slicing through the air, flicked her wrist, and buried a replica blade dead center in the target.
“Better,” Evelyn murmured.
I stepped down the metal stairs, clapping slowly. Both of them turned toward me. Grace was breathing heavily, sweat dampening her dark hair, but she stood tall.
“Impressive,” I admitted. “A few more weeks and she might actually be able to take down one of my junior capos.”
“She could take down Marcus right now if she caught him in a narrow hallway,” Evelyn replied dryly.
“Hey, I’m standing right here,” Marcus said, walking out from the corridor with a fresh stack of encrypted intelligence reports. He handed them to me, eyeing Evelyn with lingering skepticism. “Boss, we got a ping on the eastern perimeter sensors about an hour ago. No visual, but something triggered the tripwires near the old greenhouse.”
My mood darkened instantly. “Rostov?”
“Too clean for Rostov’s usual grunts,” Evelyn said, her eyes narrowing as she stepped past me to look at the monitor Marcus held. She traced a gloved finger over the thermal readout. “This footprint... it’s narrow. Rubber-soled tactical boots. Standard issue for Vanguard defectors.”
“You think your old friends have found you?” I asked, my hand dropping instinctively to my side.
“I know they have,” Evelyn said quietly. “Which means we don’t have weeks to train, Vincent. We have days—maybe hours.”
Before I could issue orders to lock down the estate, a muffled, wet thud echoed from the foyer downstairs, followed immediately by the harsh, flat screech of our primary communication lines being severed.
The power grid flickered once, twice, and then died entirely. Emergency red backup lights hissed to life, casting long, bloody shadows across the marble hallways.
“They’re inside,” Marcus snarled, pulling his sidearm.
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“Stay behind me,” I told Grace, drawing my own weapon as I pulled her close.
Evelyn didn’t draw a gun. She picked up two heavy steel batons from the rack, her expression turning into a mask of absolute ice. “Rule one of an ambush, Vincent: never look for the men who make noise. Look for the ones who don't.”
