Chapter 3 - The Snake in the GardenMy grip on the digital scope tightened until my knuckles turned white.
Gerald Russo. The loyal, silver-haired house manager who had served Nathan Coleman for over a decade. The man who had walked me into the house with a solemn, sorrowful expression, lamenting how the boys could no longer walk.
"Yes, I have the admin keys to the overseas accounts," Gerald was saying into the phone, his face illuminated by the harsh blue glare of the computer monitors behind him. "Once the boys enter a irreversible comatose state, Ashford will declare it a congenital metabolic failure. Coleman will be mentally destroyed. He'll sign the power of attorney over to me to manage the estate's liquid assets just like he did after his wife's accident."
I felt a cold rage blossom in my chest.
After his wife's accident.
The car crash eight months ago hadn't been an accident. Gerald and Ashford had systematically dismantled Nathan’s life piece by piece—first taking his wife, then poisoning his twin sons, all to strip the mob boss of his mental fortitude until he handed over the keys to his multi-billion-dollar empire.
"I'm priming the line now," Gerald muttered, turning toward a small metal box mounted beside the server rack. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small glass vial filled with a clear, dense liquid, and began drawing it into a medical syringe. "This final concentration will shut down their respiration by midnight."
I didn't have thirty minutes. I didn't even have thirty seconds.
If Gerald depressed that syringe plunger, the concentrated neurotoxin would flood the nursery air supply within two minutes, killing Marcus and Mason before Nathan could even realize what was happening.
I reached into my leather bag and pulled out my personal defense tool—a heavy, high-voltage tactical stun device disguised as a stainless steel flashlight.
I stepped out from behind the junction box and kicked the reinforced steel door wide open.
BANG!
The door slammed against the concrete wall with a deafening crack.
Gerald whirled around, his eyes wide with shock, his hand dropping toward the holster beneath his armpit. "What the—?!"
I didn't give him the chance to draw.
I lunged across the narrow room, sweeping my arm in a hard, professional arc that struck Gerald's wrist. The glass vial and syringe clattered onto the concrete, shattering into a dozen useless fragments.
Gerald grunted, his old military instincts kicking in. Despite his age, he moved with terrifying speed, grabbing my throat with his left hand and shoving me hard against the server rack.
"You..." Gerald growled, his face contorted in pure malice. "The nanny. I knew you were trouble the second you looked at that vent!"
He drew a short, serrated combat knife from his belt with his right hand, driving the blade down toward my chest.
I raised both hands, performing a hard, interior wrist-block that redirected the point of the knife into the aluminum casing of the server rack with a loud CLANG. Sparking wires sputtered around us.
I brought my right knee up sharply into his groin, breaking his grip on my neck.
Gerald gasped, stumbling back two paces.
Before he could regain his balance, I slammed the head of the tactical stun device directly against the side of his neck and pulled the trigger.
Fifty thousand volts of electric current surged through Gerald’s body.
His muscles locked instantly. His eyes rolled back into his head, and the six-foot house manager collapsed onto the concrete floor like a felled oak tree, groaning helplessly as his body twitched in involuntary spasms.
I stood over him, my chest heaving, wiping a trace of dust from my cheek.
I reached down, pulled his combat knife from the server rack, and used it to cut the transparent feed tube leading into the main ventilation wall, severing the poison line forever.
Then, I picked up Gerald's dropped burner phone, tapped the speaker button, and called the only number that mattered.
"Sarah?" Nathan's deep voice answered on the first ring, taut with immense tension. "Where are you? It's been twenty minutes."
"I'm in the lower basement security archive, Mr. Coleman," I said, breathing heavily into the receiver. "The feed line has been cut. The poison pump has been destroyed."
Silence hung on the line for one agonizing second.
"And the person running it?" Nathan asked.
May you like
I looked down at Gerald, who was lying on his side, wheezing, his eyes fixed on me with pure, impotent hatred.
"You might want to bring Frank and Vinnie down here, Mr. Coleman," I said quietly. "Your house manager has some explaining to do about your wife's car accident."
