Chapter 33 The Rat Run
The first gunshot sounded like a hammer striking an iron pipe, muffled and distant, vibrating through the soles of my feet.
I stood in the center of Dante’s master suite, my hands clenched into fists, staring at the wall.
It had started twenty minutes ago. At first, it was just shouting with faint, angry voices echoing up from the lower levels.
Then came the heavy, rhythmic thud of sledgehammers smashing through plaster. Now, it was gunfire.
Dante was not hunting. He was demolishing.
I walked to the heavy oak door and pressed my ear against the wood, straining to hear the progress of the war I had started. The sounds were moving.
They were no longer coming from the West Wing or the servants' quarters.
They were traveling through the infrastructure of the house, moving up through the risers and the ventilation shafts.
They were getting closer.
A cold knot of realization tightened in my stomach. I had told Dante the intruder was in the walls. I had told him about the dust and the vents. I had given him the target.
But by lying about how I knew, by omitting the silver key in my pocket and the specific location of the entry panel behind my closet, I had created a blind spot.
Dante was flushing the rat out, but he didn't know where the rat would run.
Bang.
Another shot, louder this time. Directly below me.
I backed away from the door. My eyes darted around the room.
The master suite was a fortress of luxury with mahogany panels, floor-to-ceiling windows, and heavy velvet drapes. But I knew now that it was just a facade.
Behind the silk wallpaper and the expensive wood was a hollow network of darkness.
And the rat was desperate.
A desperate animal doesn't curl up and die. It looks for the exit.
I looked at the fireplace. It was massive, framed in black marble. Above it, a large oil painting hung on the paneled wall.
To the right of the fireplace, near the floor, was a decorative brass vent for the heating system.
It rattled.
I froze.
The sound was faint, barely audible over the drumming of the rain against the windows. But I heard it. A metallic clink. Then a scrape.
I wasn't alone in the room.
I looked at the table where Dante had been sitting. He had taken his gun, obviously. I scanned the room for a weapon.
There was nothing. He had cleared the room of anything I could use to hurt myself or him.
No. Wait.
I ran to the sofa where I had slept. I dug my hand under the cushion.
My fingers brushed cold steel. The steak knife. The one I had stolen during dinner, the one I had hidden before Dante dragged me out.
I gripped the handle and pulled it out. It wasn't a combat knife. It was serrated tableware. Against a professional mercenary, it was a joke. But it was better than my fingernails.
Scrape. Scrape.
The sound was louder now. It was coming from behind the wall panel to the right of the fireplace.
"I know you're there," a voice whispered.
It didn't come from the intercom. It didn't come from a phone. It came directly through the wood.
It was muffled, thick with dust, but it was intimate. It was the voice of a man standing less than six inches away from me, separated only by a layer of oak.
I backed away until my legs hit the bed. "Go away."
"I can't go away, Lilith," the voice rasped. It sounded strained. "Your boyfriend is very thorough. He’s filling the lower tunnels with lead. He’s herding me."
"He’s going to kill you," I said, gripping the knife with both hands.
"Eventually. But not before I finish the job."
"You failed," I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. "You tried to gas the girl, and you failed. You tried to break me, and you failed."
A low, dry laugh echoed from behind the wall. It was a terrible sound.
"You think I came here to kill the girl? You think I wasted months of planning just to suffocate a toddler?"
"You said—"
"I said she sleeps soundly. Distraction, Lilith. Smoke and mirrors. I needed Dante out of the room. I needed him to panic. I needed him to leave you alone."
The realization hit me like a slap.
The gas. The phone call. It wasn't an assassination attempt on Jasmine. It was a diversion. He wanted Dante to run to the nursery so he could get to me.
"Why?" I whispered. "Why me?"
"Because he doesn't want you dead, princess," the voice hissed.
"If he wanted you dead, I would have put a bullet in your head while you were sleeping three weeks ago. I’ve watched you breathe for twenty nights."
My skin crawled. The violation was absolute. He had been there. In the walls. Watching.
"Then what does he want?"
"He wants the payout," the voice said. "He wants what your father stole. He wants the Key."
"I don't have a key," I shouted, my voice cracking. "I don't have anything! My father sold me with nothing but the clothes on my back!"
"That’s what you think. Or maybe that’s what you’re lying about. Just like you lied to Dante about the tunnels."
He knew.
"You played a dangerous game, Lilith," the voice continued, moving slightly to the left, closer to the vent. "You kept secrets. And now those secrets have trapped us both."
Bang.
A gunshot echoed from somewhere very close, perhaps the hallway or the room next door. The intruder went silent for a second.
"He’s getting closer," the voice whispered. "I have about three minutes before he starts tearing this wall down. Which means I have three minutes to take you."
"Take me where?"
"Out the same way I came in. Through the vents. Down the chute. To the boat waiting at the cliffs."
"I'm not going with you."
"You don't have a choice. You’re the package. And I don't get paid unless I deliver."
There was a loud crack from the wall panel. The wood splintered outward.
He wasn't using a door. He was breaking through.
I scrambled back, climbing onto the massive bed, putting distance between me and the wall.
"Dante!" I screamed. "Dante, he’s in here!"
"Scream all you want," the voice taunted. The panel cracked again, a vertical fissure appearing in the dark wood.
"The walls are thick. And with all that gunfire, nobody is hearing a thing."
Another crack. The tip of a crowbar punched through the mahogany paneling.
He twisted it. The wood groaned and snapped.
I stared at the hole. Through the gap, I saw movement. A shadow in the crawlspace. An eye reflecting the dim light of the room.
"You know," the voice said, breathless with exertion as he leveraged the crowbar. "You defend him. You protect him. The man who wears your mother’s death on his finger."
I froze.
"You think I don't know?" the intruder laughed. "I saw you staring at the ring. I saw you crying over the photo I left. You hate him. Yet here you are, screaming his name."
"He didn't send an assassin to gas a child," I spat back.
"No. He just stood by and watched a woman bleed out on a marble floor eight years ago. He watched the life leave her eyes and checked his watch."
"Shut up!"
"Ask him," the voice goaded. The panel gave way with a deafening crunch, a large section of wood falling into the room.
"Ask him about the finishing shot. Ask him why he didn't stop it."
A hand reached through the hole. A gloved hand. It gripped the edge of the broken paneling.
Then a face appeared in the gap.
He was wearing a black balaclava, but his eyes were visible. They were blue. Cold, pale blue. The eyes of a man who felt nothing.
"Time to go, Lilith," he said.
He shoved his shoulder against the weakened wood. The entire panel section collapsed inward, showering the rug with splinters and plaster dust.
He stepped into the room.
He wasn't a ghost. He was a man. Tall, dressed in black tactical gear, covered in grey dust. He held a crowbar in one hand and a gun in the other.
He looked at me, huddled on the bed with my steak knife.
He smiled beneath the mask.
"Put the butter knife away, princess. You'll only hurt yourself."
He took a step toward the bed.
I raised the knife. "Come closer," I snarled. "And I'll show you what a Rosetti does to traitors."
He laughed. He actually fucking laughed.
"That's the spirit."
Then he lunged.