Chapter 6 - Midnight Ambush
Before we could launch our offensive, the war came to us.
At 2:00 AM, the perimeter alarms of the Highland Safehouse shrieked through the night. Red emergency lights bathed the corridors in a bloody glow.
"Boss!" Dominic’s voice boomed over the intercom. "Heavy movement in the woods! They’ve bypassed the outer sensors! It’s a full assault!"
Marco Valenti had realized Julian Mercer was compromised. Knowing his window was closing, he had thrown everything he had into one desperate, all-out strike on my safehouse.
"Elena! Get the boys into the panic bunker!" I shouted, rushing down the hall with an automatic rifle slung across my chest.
I met Elena in the main hallway. She was ushering the four boys, who were wide awake, their eyes big with fear.
"Father!" Nico called out, grabbing my sleeve. "Are the bad men here?"
I dropped to one knee, pulled all four of them into a tight embrace, and kissed each of their foreheads.
"Listen to me," I said, looking into eight identical slate-gray eyes. "You are Morettis. We do not fear the dark. We rule it. Get inside the vault with Elena. I will handle the rest."
"Kill them, Daddy," Mateo whispered grimly.
I gave a grim nod. "Consider it done."
Elena locked the heavy steel blast door of the panic room behind them.
The moment the lock clicked, the north wall of the living room detonated. Concrete, glass, and wood exploded inward as a flashbang grenade blinded the entryway.
Tactical mercenaries poured through the breach, firing automatic weapons.
I took cover behind a reinforced stone pillar, banking my fire. Two mercenaries dropped as my 7.62mm rounds chewed through their body armor.
"Suppressing fire!" a mercenary commander roared. "Find the basement entrance! Valenti wants the kids dead or alive!"
"They won't reach the basement!" I growled, stepping out from behind the pillar and raining destruction down the hallway.
Dominic and six of my most elite bodyguards flanked the breach from the east corridor. The safehouse turned into a meat grinder. The thunderous roar of automatic gunfire, shattered glass, and dying shouts echoed through the halls.
I advanced like a nightmare through the smoke, clearing room by room. Every mercenary who crossed my path met a swift, merciless end.
Within fifteen minutes, the assault was shattered. Twenty-two mercenary bodies lay strewn across the ruined ground floor of the safehouse.
I stepped through the breached wall onto the muddy lawn. Rain hit my face, mixing with the sweat and blood on my skin.
Near the tree line, a single surviving mercenary leader was crawling through the mud, bleeding heavily from a chest wound.
I walked over and stood over him, my boots sinking into the wet earth. I pressed the warm barrel of my rifle against his forehead.
"Who sent you?" I asked quietly.
"Valenti..." the man gasped, coughing up blood. "He’s... he’s at the docks... assembling a fleet to leave the country... if this hit failed..."
"Thank you for the information," I said.
A single gunshot echoed into the pine forest.
I turned back to Dominic, who was bleeding from a minor graze on his arm.
"Is the house secure?" I asked.
"Yes, Boss. The perimeter is swept. No survivors."
"Good," I said, wiping the rain from my eyes. "Prepare the convoy. We go to the docks."
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"Now, Boss? In the middle of a storm?"
"Marco Valenti is trying to flee," I said, my voice cold as the arctic wind blowing off the lake. "I promised my wife I would end this. And I don't break promises to Sofia."
