Chapter 4 - The Truth Behind the MirrorThe elevator doors opened with a soft, mechanical chime.
Marcus stepped out into the quiet foyer, but he was no longer dressed in his neat security suit. He wore a heavy tactical vest, and in his hands, he held a silenced submachine gun. Behind him stood two rogue security guards from my personal detail who had clearly been bought off.
He stopped when he saw me standing in the center of the vast living room, sitting casually on the edge of my glass desk, holding an unlit cigar between my fingers.
"You always were too smart for your own good, Andrew," Marcus said, raising the barrel of his weapon. "If you had just stayed in Chicago until tomorrow, you would have inherited a quiet, tragic story. A penthouse fire caused by a gas leak. A grieving father losing his remaining family. It would have been clean."
"A gas leak," I repeated, my voice calm, almost conversational. "Is that what you arranged for Emma's car nine months ago, Marcus? A tragic brake failure?"
Marcus chuckled, a cold, sickening sound that echoed in the high-ceilinged room. "Emma was getting too close to the truth. She found out I was redirecting fifteen percent of the shipping revenue from the docks to the Valenti family. She was going to tell you that night. I couldn't let her do that."
"And the locket?"
"The locket contained the private ledger codes to your father's Swiss accounts," Marcus sneered, taking a step forward. "Four hundred million dollars. I've spent nine months trying to crack the encryption on the chip I stole from her neck. And today, I was going to take the physical backup key hidden in your private study vault."
"You used Mrs. Vance to torment my son," I said, my hand clenching around the cigar until it crushed into pieces. "You had her trigger his trauma every day with those keys so he would stay silent. So he could never tell me what he saw that afternoon."
"The kid was a loose end," Marcus shrugged casually. "I spared his life at the crash site because he was a baby, but his silence was necessary. Too bad your new maid had to play hero. Where is she, by the way? And where is the boy?"
"They're somewhere you can't touch them, Marcus," I said.
"Search the bedrooms!" Marcus ordered the two guards behind him. "Kill the maid. Bring the kid to me."
Before the two guards could move three steps, a sharp, deafening roar shattered the quiet.
BANG! BANG!
Two high-caliber shots rang out from the shadow of the hallway archway. The two guards collapsed onto the marble floor instantly, their weapons clattering uselessly against the stone.
Marcus spun around in absolute shock.
Standing near the hallway, holding a tactical shotgun she had retrieved from my hidden hallway gun safe, was Elizabeth. Her posture was flawless, her grip rock-solid, her eyes filled with terrifying precision.
"Former FBI, Marcus," Elizabeth said, her voice cutting through the gunshot smoke. "Did you really think I didn't know where the house armory was located?"
Marcus cursed violently, raising his submachine gun toward her.
In that split second of distraction, I moved. I lunged off the desk, drawing my revolver from my shoulder holster. I fired two rapid shots.
The first bullet struck Marcus in the right shoulder, spinning him around and causing his weapon to fly out of his hands. The second bullet hit his leg, dropping him to his knees on the marble floor.
Marcus screamed in pain, clutching his bleeding shoulder, crawling backward until his back hit the glass wall of the balcony.
I walked over to him slowly, the leather of my boots crunching on the spent shell casings. I pressed the warm barrel of my revolver directly against the center of his forehead.
"Please... Andrew... mercy!" Marcus begged, his arrogance completely shattered, blood dripping onto the white floor. "We were brothers! I served your father!"
"You killed my wife," I said, my voice dropping to a icy, terrifying whisper. "You tortured my son. You forfeited your right to breathe in this city."
"Andrew, wait!" Elizabeth's voice called out from behind me.
I didn't lower the gun, but I kept my finger steady on the trigger. "He doesn't deserve a trial, Elizabeth. This is my world."
"I'm not asking you to give him a trial for him," Elizabeth said, stepping up beside me, her shotgun held low. "I'm asking you to do it for Alex. If you execute him here, in cold blood, you bring the blood war back into this house. Alex is upstairs. He needs a father who builds a future, not a monster who lives in the dark."
I looked into Elizabeth's eyes. I saw Emma in her—the same unyielding moral compass, the same fierce love for my son.
I looked down at Marcus, who was trembling, weeping, looking at me with pathetic terror.
May you like
Slowly, I lowered the barrel of my gun.
"Marco is downstairs with thirty men," I said coldly. "He will take Marcus and Mrs. Vance into federal custody alongside the evidence chip Elizabeth extracted from your ring. You will spend the rest of your natural life in a federal supermax facility, Marcus. And every single day, you will know that my family survived you."
