Chapter 5 - The East Wing Trap
Emergency red lights flickered on, painting the dining room in blood-colored shadows.
Mia counted the attackers.
Six visible. Maybe more in the service hall. Carlo had vanished. The priest was dead or unconscious. Lorenzo was bleeding but alert. Matteo was still under the table, furious and alive.
Bianca Vale had a gun.
Of course she did.
She crouched behind a column and met Mia’s eyes across the room. With two fingers, Bianca pointed toward a narrow door behind the fireplace.
Mia knew that look.
Exit route.
“Mr. Duca,” Mia whispered, “can you walk?”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”
“That means no.”
“It means yes with pain.”
“Good enough.”
She tore the sleeve from her blazer and pressed it against his wound. “Hold this. If you bleed on my shoes, I’ll bill you.”
His eyes narrowed. “You are disrespectful.”
“I’m motivating.”
Across the room, Matteo moved.
Mia shook her head sharply.
He ignored her.
Of course he did.
He grabbed a fallen chair and threw it into the nearest attacker. Bianca fired at the same time. The man dropped. The room erupted again.
Mia used the distraction. She hauled Lorenzo through the fireplace door and into a narrow passage. Matteo reached them two seconds later, breathing hard.
“I told you to stay down,” she hissed.
“My father was bleeding.”
“Your father is still bleeding, but now I also want to hit you.”
Matteo looked at Lorenzo. “Are you hurt badly?”
Lorenzo’s face tightened. “I have had worse.”
Mia glanced at him. “That is not medical information.”
The passage led into the east wing, where old servant corridors ran behind the estate walls. Mia had studied the floor plan on the ride over. Most guards memorized entrances and exits. Mia memorized embarrassing details too: linen closets, laundry chutes, dumbwaiters, antique vents wide enough for a child or a desperate adult with flexible shoulders.
Behind them, shouting echoed.
Carlo knew the house better than anyone.
But Mia knew something Carlo did not.
She knew that people expected her to move wrong.
So she used it.
At the first junction, she deliberately knocked over a brass umbrella stand. It crashed loudly down the left corridor.
Then she pulled Matteo and Lorenzo right.
Footsteps thundered toward the noise.
Matteo stared at her. “You weaponized clumsiness.”
“I prefer the term tactical misdirection.”
They reached a small security alcove. The monitor screens were black. Carlo had cut the main feed, but the old analog panel beneath the desk still blinked with power.
Mia dropped to her knees and yanked open the lower cabinet.
“What are you doing?” Matteo asked.
“Looking for the system nobody handsome remembered existed.”
“I’m handsome?”
“Focus.”
Lorenzo, pale now, leaned against the wall. “The old panic circuit.”
Mia nodded. “Independent line?”
“Yes. My wife insisted on it.”
For the first time, Matteo’s face softened at the mention of his mother.
Mia pulled the dusty receiver from beneath the panel. Static hissed. Then a voice crackled through.
“Gatehouse.”
“This is Callaway with Matteo and Lorenzo Duca,” Mia said. “Carlo is compromised. Estate under attack. Lock all exits. Do not trust internal commands unless they come from me, Matteo, Lorenzo, or Bianca Vale.”
A pause.
Then the gatehouse guard replied, “Understood.”
Mia hung up.
Matteo looked at her. “You just took command of my father’s estate.”
“Temporarily.”
Lorenzo slid down the wall, strength failing.
Mia’s confidence cracked for half a second.
Then the old intercom above them clicked.
Carlo’s voice filled the corridor.
“Matteo, enough. Come to the chapel by midnight, or I release everything.”
Matteo went still.
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
Mia looked between them.
“What does he have?” she asked.
May you like
Neither man answered.
That frightened her more than the guns.
