Chapter 5 - THE INTRUDERS
The perimeter alarm wailed through the mansion with an ear-splitting, synchronized pulse. Red emergency strobe lights bathed the mahogany walls in a blood-colored glow.
Victor immediately shoved Lily behind his desk. “Stay down!”
“What was that?!” Lily gasped, clutching the edge of the heavy desk as another concussive blast rattled the bulletproof glass windows.
Victor drew a sleek, matte-black Glock 19 from a hidden compartment beneath his workstation, racking the slide with practiced ease. “Breach at the front gate. Serena’s father didn’t wait for the morning news. He sent a private extraction team to get her out.”
On the central control terminal, the estate’s external security feeds flickered back online. Three black, unmarked tactical SUVs had rammed through the wrought-iron front gates. Men in heavy ballistic armor and night-vision goggles were fanning across the courtyard, carrying suppressed carbines.
Victor tapped his earpiece. “Marcus! Report!”
Static cracked through the comms. “Boss! They’ve got heavy ordnance! Breached the south wing—they’re heading straight for the basement holding cells to extract Serena, and a second team is moving up the east staircase toward the nursery!”
“Intercept the team heading for the nursery at all costs!” Victor barked. “I will handle the basement!”
Victor grabbed a spare tactical sidearm from the desk drawer and pressed it into Lily’s hands.
“I… I don’t know how to shoot,” she stammered, staring wide-eyed at the cold steel.
“Point and pull the trigger if anyone besides me or Marcus opens that door,” Victor said, his eyes locking onto hers with unwavering intensity. “I am going to secure Ethan and eliminate the breach. Lock this room from the master terminal. Don’t open it for anyone.”
“Victor, be careful!” Lily cried, using his first name without realizing it.
Victor gave her a single, firm nod before slipping out of the study into the darkened corridor.
The mansion was completely silent now, save for the rhythmic flash of the emergency strobes. Victor moved like a wraith through the shadows of the west wing. He knew every blind spot, every creaking floorboard, and every corner of this ancestral home.
Down in the lower corridor near the wine cellar, two armed mercenaries were cutting through the heavy reinforced iron gate with a portable thermal torch.
“Hurry up!” one of the men growled in a thick Eastern European accent. “Senator Vance wants her in the helicopter in five minutes!”
Inside the cell, Serena was pacing back and forth, grinning manically. “Cut it faster! And make sure you put a bullet between Victor’s eyes before we leave! I want him dead!”
“He won’t have to wait,” Victor’s voice echoed from the end of the hall.
The two mercenaries spun around, raising their rifles, but Victor was already moving.
Two deafening gunshots cracked in rapid succession. The first mercenary collapsed instantly as a round struck his chest plate with enough kinetic force to throw him backward into the wall. The second mercenary raised his carbine, but Victor closed the distance in a heartbeat, grabbing the barrel, deflecting the muzzle toward the ceiling, and driving a vicious palm strike into the man’s throat.
The mercenary choked, dropping his weapon. Victor swept his legs out from under him and struck him across the jaw with the pistol grip, knocking him unconscious cold.
Serena gasped, stumbling back against the stone wall of her cell as Victor stepped through the smoke, his eyes burning with lethal intent.
“Victor… please!” she shrieked, cowering behind the wine racks. “My father forced me to do this! He threatened to cut me off if I didn’t help him save the company! It was all his idea!”
Victor stared through the iron bars at the woman who had murdered his wife and starved his child.
“Save your breath for the federal prosecutors, Serena,” Victor said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “Your father’s private army just made this a federal treason and terrorism case.”
Suddenly, the intercom speaker in the hallway crackled to life.
A cold, familiar voice echoed from the master study speakers upstairs:
“Victor, my boy. You always were too smart for your own good.”
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Victor froze. It was Senator Arthur Vance’s voice.
“Your little nanny was very brave,” the Senator drawled over the speaker, chuckling darkly. “She tried to fight back. But she’s in my hands now. If you want her and your precious baby to see tomorrow’s sunrise, bring my daughter to the helicopter pad on the roof. You have sixty seconds.”
