Chapter 6 - The Voice in the Dark
The absolute blackness of the dining room was absolute, swallowing the polished mahogany table and the crystal chandelier in a single, suffocating gulp.
My thumb instinctively engaged the safety catch of the Sig Sauer beneath my jacket.
"Elena?" I called out, my voice cutting through the heavy silence of the pitch-black estate.
"She's not here, Vincent."
The voice came from the shadowed corridor leading toward the grand foyer—smooth, velvety, and entirely foreign. It wasn't my wife. It wasn't one of my capos or bodyguards. It was a man’s voice, carrying a chilling cadence of absolute control.
A sharp metallic click echoed through the dark room. A heavy-duty tactical flashlight flared to life, its blinding white beam cutting straight through the gloom and pinning me against the French doors.
Behind the glare, standing near the sideboard, was a tall figure in a tailored black overcoat. He wore leather gloves and held a suppressed pistol pointed lazily toward the floor, though his eyes—glinting sharply in the halogen wash—were fixed entirely on me.
"Who the hell are you?" I demanded, squinting against the light while my right hand inched the firearm out of its leather holster.
"A man who knows that your backup generator was disabled from the main circuit box three minutes ago," the stranger replied calmly. He stepped out of the shadows, revealing a clean-shaven face with a thin, jagged scar running from his left ear down into his collar. "And a man who knows that your brilliant toxicologist in Baltimore just gave you a fourteen-day deadline on your daughter's life."
My blood turned to ice water.
"You hacked the secure satellite line," I snarled, the realization slamming into me with the force of a freight train.
"Information is my currency, Vincent. Not drugs, not nightclubs, not illegal shipments," the man said, lowering the flashlight just enough for me to see his smirk. "Your wife didn't act alone. You thought this was a domestic betrayal, a wicked stepmother poisoning a blind child out of greed. But you've always looked at the world through the narrow lens of a street-level boss."
Before I could fire or lunging forward across the room, a child's terrified cry pierced the darkness from the upstairs hallway.
"Daddy! Help me! It's dark! I can't see anything!"
Lila.
I whipped around toward the stairs, abandoning caution. But as I bolted for the corridor, the stranger’s voice cracked like a whip behind me:
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"Take one step toward those stairs, Moretti, and the men I have stationed in your daughter's bedroom will give her the final dose right now."
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