Chapter 4 - Shadows in the Dark
The panic room was small, lit only by the green glow of emergency battery-backup displays and a bank of high-resolution security monitors mounted on the far wall.
The nurse was clutching Aria tightly to her chest, her breathing shallow and terrified in the confined space. I sat on the reinforced steel bench, holding Chloe against my heart, staring up at the screens.
The cameras showed different angles of the penthouse.
In the main living area, broken glass from the floor-to-ceiling windows littered the floor where a second breaching team had apparently tried to scale the outside balcony using tactical lines. But Marcus and his men had been waiting. Two men in black tactical gear lay motionless near the sofa, while Marcus stood over a third, pinning him to the marble floor with a combat boot pressed against his throat.
Then my eyes locked onto the central camera showing the primary hallway.
Elias stood near the foyer, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing lean, corded muscle and a dark spray of fresh blood across his forearm—not his own. He was kneeling beside a fallen assailant, holding a satellite phone up to his ear while speaking in a low, dangerous tone.
I watched the monitor as Elias ended the call, his dark eyes lifting directly toward the dome of the hallway security camera, as if he knew I was watching.
He didn't look worried. He looked like an executioner who had just received the name he was waiting for.
Slowly, I reached out and tapped the intercom toggle on the console beside the bench.
"Elias?" I whispered into the mic.
His voice crackled through the small speaker inside the panic room instantly. "You're safe?"
"We're in the panic room. The girls are unharmed." A pause stretched between us. "Who sent them, Elias? Was it... was it my husband?"
"Your husband doesn't have the brains or the capital to hire a tier-one black-ops cleanup crew, Ava," Elias replied, his voice flat and hard as iron. "He was just a pawn. A loud, miserable little pawn used to flush us out."
"Then who?"
"A man who lost a multi-million-dollar shipping route to my organization last month," Elias said, standing up and stepping over the debris in the hallway. "And apparently, he found out that the woman I pulled off the street near the river isn't just a stray."
The blood drained from my face. "What does that mean?"
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"It means," Elias said, his voice dropping an octave, "they didn't just come here for you. They came because they know who your father was."
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