Chapter 7 - THE BURNER PHONE
I stared at the security feed.
Julian was smiling. He knew the structural limits of the panic room. The door was bulletproof, but a targeted C4 charge on the hinges in an enclosed space would create a pressure wave strong enough to rupture the lungs of everyone inside.
He was going to kill my daughters exactly the way he killed their mother.
“Mr. Russo,” Elena whispered, her voice trembling. “What do we do?”
I looked at the heavy steel door. Then I looked at the emergency ventilation shaft near the ceiling.
It was too small for me. But it was big enough for a child. Or a slender woman.
“Elena,” I said, moving quickly. I dragged the heavy metal table under the vent. “Get up there. Take the girls. Climb through the shaft. It leads to the garden shed outside the perimeter wall.”
“I’m not leaving you!” Elena cried.
“You have to! He wants the ledger and the recording. If I open the door, I can buy you time to crawl out.”
I lifted Mia, handing her up to Elena, who had climbed onto the table. Valentina went next. Both girls were crying, but they were silent. The trauma had trained them to be quiet in the face of terror.
I picked up Lucia.
She wrapped her small arms around my neck, burying her face in my collar.
“Daddy,” she whimpered.
“I love you, Lucia,” I whispered, kissing her forehead. “Be brave for Mommy.”
I handed her up to Elena, who pulled her into the dark, narrow shaft.
“Rosa, go,” I ordered.
Rosa shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “I can’t fit, Dominic. And I’m not leaving you. This is my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, gripping her shoulder. “Hide behind the reinforced server rack.”
I grabbed the ledger and the SD card. I shoved them into my jacket pocket.
“Ten seconds, Dom!” Julian’s voice echoed through the intercom. “Or I press the button!”
I pulled my pistol, aiming it directly at the center of the steel door.
I punched the override code into the keypad.
The heavy deadbolts hissed, and the door swung open.
Julian was standing ten feet away, flanked by two heavily armed mercenaries.
He didn’t hesitate. He raised his gun and fired.
The bullet grazed my shoulder, tearing through my jacket. I fired back, hitting one of the mercenaries in the chest. He went down hard.
I dove behind my massive oak desk as the second mercenary opened fire, shredding the leather chair and shattering the monitor.
“Give me the ledger, Dom!” Julian yelled over the gunfire. “And the girl! I know she’s in there!”
He thought Elena was the key. He didn’t know Isabella had found the necklace.
I popped up, firing twice, dropping the second mercenary.
It was just me and Julian now.
“The ledger is right here, Julian,” I called out, staying behind the desk. “But you’re too late. I found the SD card in Isabella’s necklace. I heard your voice ordering the hit.”
The gunfire stopped.
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the study.
“She was a stupid, meddling woman,” Julian sneered, stepping slowly into the room, his gun raised. “She couldn’t just leave well enough alone. She wanted to play hero.”
“She was your sister.”
“She was a liability!” Julian shouted, his composure finally breaking. “Our father built this empire, and he gave it to you! An outsider! I took back what was mine.”
“You took a bullet for nothing,” I said coldly.
I stood up, leveling my gun at his chest.
Julian aimed directly at my head.
We were deadlocked. If one of us fired, the other would too. We would both die.
But Julian smiled.
He reached into his pocket with his left hand and pulled out a small burner phone.
Not the detonator. A phone.
“You think you outsmarted me, Dom?” Julian laughed. “I knew about the ventilation shaft. I designed this room, remember?”
My blood ran cold.
Julian tapped a button on the phone, putting it on speaker.
“Got them, boss,” a gruff voice came through the phone.
A scream echoed from the speaker. Elena’s scream.
“Let them go!” Elena cried out through the phone.
“I had men waiting at the garden shed,” Julian said, his eyes gleaming with malicious triumph. “Drop the gun, Dom. Toss the ledger and the SD card over the desk. Or my men execute Elena and your daughters right now.”
The world stopped spinning.
I had lost.
I slowly lowered my gun. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the ledger and the SD card, and tossed them onto the floor.
I dropped my pistol. It clattered against the hardwood.
“Good boy,” Julian sneered. He walked forward, keeping his gun aimed at my chest, and picked up the ledger and the drive.
“Now,” Julian said, his finger tightening on the trigger. “I send you to be with my sister.”
Before he could pull the trigger—
A massive shadow filled the doorway behind him.
Victor.
My head of security was bleeding from a gash on his forehead, his suit torn, but his eyes were burning with pure, unadulterated rage.
Julian didn’t even have time to turn around.
Victor raised his massive boot and kicked the back of Julian’s knee. The bone snapped with a sickening crack.
Julian screamed, collapsing to the floor, dropping his gun.
Victor kicked the gun across the room, then planted his heavy boot directly on Julian’s chest, pinning him to the floor.
“You’re alive,” I breathed, staring at Victor.
“It takes more than a few mercenaries to kill me, Boss,” Victor growled, pressing his boot harder into Julian’s chest, making him gasp for air.
I didn’t waste a second. I picked up Julian’s dropped burner phone and yelled into it.
“This is Dominic Russo! The man holding my children, listen to me very carefully. Julian is captured. The empire is mine again. If you harm one hair on their heads, I will hunt you to the ends of the earth.”
The man on the other end of the line hesitated.
Then, a new sound came through the phone.
Sirens. Dozens of them.
“FBI! Drop your weapons!” a voice echoed through the phone.
I frowned, confused. I hadn’t called the police. We never called the police.
“Who called the feds?” Victor asked.
May you like
From the panic room, Rosa stepped out. She was shaking, holding her own burner phone.
“I did,” Rosa said softly. “While you were fighting. I called the FBI director. I told him Julian was here. And I told him I had the evidence to put Julian away forever.”
