Chapter 4 - The Siege of the Estate
By the time Sophia locked herself and Emma inside the reinforced panic room behind the pantry, chaos had erupted across the Duca estate.
Vincent’s enforcers, realizing their boss's coup had been compromised by a housekeeper and a toddler, flooded the hallways. Gunshots echoed through the grand foyer as Lorenzo’s true loyalists—men who had remained faithful but had been locked out of the inner perimeter—fought back against Vincent’s rogue faction.
Inside the panic room, Emma cried softly against Sophia’s chest, clutching her damaged toy rabbit. Sophia monitored the security feeds on the digital console embedded in the wall.
On screen, the basement door burst open. Vincent, bruised and bleeding from the chair impact, dragged Lorenzo up the stairs at gunpoint, using the battered mafia boss as a human shield.
"Sophia!" Vincent’s voice bellowed through the estate’s intercom system, amplified and dripping with venom. "Open the reinforced door right now, or I put a bullet through your precious boss's head, and then I hunt down you and your brat!"
Sophia’s hands hovered over the manual override lever. If she opened the door, they would be executed immediately. If she kept it closed, Lorenzo would die on the other side of the steel.
She looked at the security monitor. In the courtyard outside, the family doctor’s car had just pulled up through the front gates, blocked instantly by Vincent’s armed men.
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Then, a low, rumbling roar echoed from the driveway.
Black armored SUVs—bearing the private crest of the Sicilian elders who oversaw all territorial disputes—rammed through the iron security gates, deploying a dozen heavily armed enforcers who surrounded the estate in seconds.
