675 Through the Shadows of Deception: A Chronicle of Vengeance, Bloodlines, and the Unyielding Resilience of a Mother's Soul

My fingers shook as I threw the manual lever of the panic room door and pulled it open.

The air outside smelled of cordite, hot metal, and ozone. The master bedroom looked like a war zone; splinters of wood from the broken door frame littered the floor, and a stray round had punched a ragged hole right through my bedside table.

Elias was waiting at the end of the short corridor, wiping a streak of black soot from his cheek with the back of his hand. His dark eyes swept over me and the babies, checking for any sign of injury before his shoulders finally relaxed by a fraction of an inch.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, stepping closer.

"No," I managed to say, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to keep it steady. "We're... we're fine. But who was that? Why are they coming after us like this?"

"That was Viktor Petrov," Elias said grimly, nodding toward the wounded man Marcus and another guard were currently dragging out of the foyer by his tactical vest. "A regional lieutenant for the Bratva out of Brighton Beach. If Petrov is personally leading a wet-work team into my building, it means the information your father left behind isn't just a rumor."

Marcus shoved the groaning Russian mercenary onto his knees near the shattered floor-to-ceiling windows, keeping a combat boot planted firmly between his shoulder blades.

"Boss," Marcus reported, tossing a heavy, encrypted data-drive onto the floor near Elias's feet. "We pulled this off his tactical rig before he could wipe it. Their tech guy was trying to patch into our mainframe."

Elias knelt down, picked up the matte-black drive, and slipped it into his pocket without a word. He then turned his cold, piercing gaze down at Petrov, who was glaring up at him with bloodshot, defiant eyes.

"You're wasting your time, Vance," Petrov spat, coughing up a streak of red onto the white marble. "The girl doesn't know what her old man hid, but someone does. And when the Syndicate finds out you're sheltering her, this whole tower is coming down with you inside it."

Elias didn't raise his voice. He didn't threaten him with torture or a slow death. He simply reached down, grabbed Petrov by the collar of his ruined tactical vest, and hauled him up to eye level with one hand.

"Tell your bosses something for me, Viktor," Elias whispered, his tone dropping into a freezing, subterranean register that made even Marcus step back a half-pace. "Tell them that the next time they send a cleaning crew into my home, I won't send them back in an elevator. I'll drop them off the roof."

With a flick of his wrist, Elias tossed Petrov back down onto the floor like a sack of garbage.

"Take him down to the sub-level holding cells," Elias ordered Marcus. "Patch up his leg—I want him conscious when I start asking questions about who he's really answering to."