Chapter 2 - The First Shot
Glass burst inward like ice under pressure.
Mia moved before anyone else did.
She slammed into Matteo’s side and drove him behind the leather sofa. A bullet tore through the air where his head had been less than a heartbeat earlier. Books jumped from the shelves. Wood splintered. Someone shouted from the hallway.
Matteo grabbed her arm. “Mia—”
“Stay down.”
A second shot cracked through the broken window.
Mia reached beneath her blazer and pulled her compact pistol free. Her hands were steady. Her feet had always been the unreliable part of her body. Her hands had never betrayed her.
Across the room, Carlo drew his weapon and barked orders into his radio. “East perimeter! Shooter on the bluff!”
Lorenzo had not ducked. He stood beside the desk, face pale with fury, as if the bullet had personally offended him.
Mia raised her voice. “Mr. Duca, down.”
His eyes cut to her.
“Now,” she snapped.
For one instant, every man in the room froze. No one spoke to Lorenzo Duca that way.
Then he slowly lowered himself behind the desk.
Matteo stared at Mia. “You just ordered my father to hide.”
“I ordered your father not to die stupidly.”
“I heard that,” Lorenzo said from behind the desk.
“Good,” Mia replied.
A third shot struck the wall above them. Mia tracked the angle, counted the delay, listened to the echo. Not close. Not far. Bluff line. Elevated. Suppressed rifle, professional hands.
But something was wrong.
The shooter had a perfect line into the library. Too perfect. That meant someone had known Matteo would be here. Someone knew his habit of reading in the east wing after arrival. Someone knew the camera had been compromised before Mia noticed it.
That kind of information did not come from outside the gates.
It came from inside.
“Matteo,” she said quietly, “does everyone know you come here to read?”
His eyes darkened. “No.”
“Who does?”
He hesitated.
That was answer enough.
The shooting stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Security men thundered through the hallway. Carlo crossed toward the shattered window.
Mia grabbed a heavy silver letter opener from the desk and threw it.
It struck Carlo’s wrist before he reached the curtain. His gun dropped to the carpet.
He spun on her, face red. “Are you insane?”
“Don’t stand in front of a window after a shooter stops firing,” Mia said. “That is when they wait for movement.”
Lorenzo rose slowly behind his desk.
Carlo’s humiliation was sharp enough to taste.
Matteo looked from Carlo to Mia, then toward the broken window. “She’s right.”
Carlo picked up his gun, jaw working. “I know my job.”
“Then do it better,” Mia said.
The room went silent again.
This time, Matteo did not laugh.
He watched Mia with a different expression now. Not amusement. Not flirtation. Something closer to attention.
Lorenzo stepped around his desk, glass crunching beneath his polished shoes. He looked at the hole in the window, then at the camera, then at his son.
Finally, his eyes settled on Mia.
“One night,” he said again.
But this time, it did not sound like an insult.
May you like
It sounded like a challenge.
Mia holstered her weapon. “Then I suggest we stop pretending tonight is normal.”
