Chapter 9 - The Siege at Dawn
The peace didn't last forty-eight hours.
News of the Ashford family's humiliation and Elias’s miraculous recovery spread through Chicago’s underworld like wildfire. Competitors and rivals who thought Elias was crippled—led by a ruthless syndicate captain named Marcus Vance—saw an opportunity to strike while the king was distracted.
At 3:00 AM, the security alarms across the Marchetti estate began to blare.
Maeve woke up instantly, bolting upright in bed. Red emergency strobe lights flashed against the bedroom walls, and the distant sound of shattering glass and gunfire echoed through the corridors.
Bang! Bang!
The bedroom door burst open. Gabriel Ferraro stood in the doorway, holding a tactical submachine gun, his face covered in soot and sweat.
"Miss Donnelly—get in the panic room now!" Gabriel yelled over the blaring alarms. "Vance’s men breached the perimeter! They've got heavy artillery!"
"Where is Elias?" Maeve demanded, ignoring the panic room.
"He’s in the study! He’s taking care of it!" Gabriel shouted.
Maeve didn't run to the panic room. Instead, she grabbed a heavy brass candlestick from the mantelpiece and bolted out of the room, running down the corridor toward the study.
When she reached the main study, the heavy oak doors were splintered. Inside, two armed thugs wearing tactical vests were holding Elias down near the desk. Elias had managed to disarm one of them, but his wounded left leg had buckled during the scuffle, and Marcus Vance himself stood over him, holding a 9mm pistol aimed directly at Elias’s chest.
"Well, well, well," Marcus Vance sneered, a wicked grin stretching across his face. "The great Elias Marchetti. Turns out the cripple can stand after all. Too bad it’s the last thing you'll ever do."
"Marcus," Elias said coldly, his voice steady as he glared up from the floor, his right hand slowly reaching toward his pocket. "You came into my house without an invitation. That’s a fatal mistake."
"The only mistake I made was not killing you on Wacker Drive!" Marcus raised his pistol, his finger tightening on the trigger.
"HEY!" Maeve screamed.
Marcus turned around in surprise just as Maeve swung the heavy brass candlestick with all her might, smashing it squarely across Marcus’s jaw.
Marcus stumbled backward, dropping his gun. The second thug lunged toward Maeve, but Elias moved with terrifying speed—surging upward from the floor, slamming his fist into the thug’s solar plexus, and sending him crashing backward through a glass display case.
Gabriel and his security team burst into the room a second later, subduing the remaining intruders in a blur of tactical precision.
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Marcus groaned, holding his bleeding jaw as Gabriel kicked him hard in the ribs, knocking him out cold.
The room fell silent once more, save for the blaring of the exterior alarms winding down.
