Chapter 3 - The Ghost from the PastThe air in the dining room grew thick with the metallic scent of gun oil and approaching violence. Outside the archway, the sound of tactical boots grew closer, accompanied by the distinct, sickening click-clack of assault rifles being switched to automatic fire.
“Boss, we can’t hold the hall!” Viktor shouted, ducking as a stray round punched through the plaster wall above the doorway, sending a shower of white dust over his shoulders. “There’s too many of them, and they have thermal breaching charges! They’re going to blow the courtyard wall!”
“Get the boys through the panic room tunnel behind the fireplace,” I ordered, grabbing Elena by the arm and hauling her to her feet.
“I’m not leaving you—” she started.
“Move!” I roared, shoving her toward the massive stone hearth.
I reached up and pressed a hidden brass relief sculpture of a wolf’s head embedded in the stonework. With a heavy, pneumatic hiss, a six-foot section of the stone fireplace pivoted inward, revealing a dark, steel-lined corridor plunging downward into the bedrock beneath the lake.
“In! Go!” I pushed Mateo and his brothers through the opening. The boys didn't scream; they were too terrified, clutching each other’s shirts in silence as Elena bundled them inside the concrete shelter.
Elena paused on the threshold, looking back at me with tears streaming down her face. “Alejandro… he won't stop until he has them.”
“Who is he?” I demanded, raising my Sig Sauer toward the archway as shadows flickered against the hallway wall.
“Marcus Vance,” she whispered.
The name hit me like a physical blow.
Marcus Vance. My former mentor. The man who had pulled me out of the gutters of the South Side twenty-five years ago, taught me how to launder money, how to read a balance sheet, and how to slit a throat without leaving a drop on my cuffs. Ten years ago, Vance had supposedly died in a private jet explosion over the Atlantic—an explosion that the FBI had officially ruled an accident, but which I had always suspected was an internal hit by the syndicate.
If Marcus Vance was alive…
If Marcus Vance was the one hunting my sons…
Then everything I thought I knew about my empire, my marriage, and my life was a carefully constructed lie.
“Boss! Incoming!” Viktor yelled.
A flash-bang grenade vaulted through the archway, spinning across the polished marble floor.
“Cover your eyes!” I bellowed.
CRACK-FLASH!
A blinding white light detonated the room, accompanied by a concussive shockwave that rang in my ears, stripping away my equilibrium. I stumbled backward, my vision swimming with purple afterimages, firing two blind rounds into the doorway.
Through the ringing in my ears, heavy boots marched into the room.
“Secure the package!” a cold, synthesized voice barked through a tactical respirator. “Leave Moretti alive if possible! The boss wants to explain things to him personally!”
I shook my head violently, forcing my eyes to focus through the haze of smoke and white phosphorus.
Three operators in black matte tactical armor poured into the dining room, their assault rifles raised, laser sights painting the walls with crimson dots.
I didn't hesitate.
I rolled behind the heavy mahogany table, bringing the Sig Sauer up with both hands.
Bang! Bang!
The first operator caught a round square in the ceramic chest plate, staggering back into the arms of his teammate.
Bang! Bang!
The second took a round to the thigh, dropping to the floor with a guttural curse.
Before I could acquire the third, a heavy boot slammed onto my wrist, crushing my hand against the hardwood floor. The Sig flew from my grip, skittering across the room into the shadows.
I looked up through a haze of pain.
Standing over me was a towering figure in custom ballistic plating. He didn't wear a helmet; instead, his face was uncovered. A jagged scar ran from his right ear down to his jawline, and his eyes—cold, dead, reptilian gray—looked down at me with absolute contempt.
“Good to see you standing, boy,” a raspy, gravelly voice echoed through the smoke.
It wasn't Marcus. It was his right-hand enforcer—a ghost from the old Chicago days whom I had personally buried in a shallow grave behind an abandoned steel mill in Gary, Indiana, back in 2018.
Viktor Lynch.
“Lynch…” I spat, tasting copper on my tongue where I’d bitten my cheek during the blast. “You should be rotting in a landfill.”
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Lynch smiled, revealing a row of yellowed teeth. He pressed the barrel of a suppressed MP5 directly against my forehead.
“And you should have checked the body, Alejandro,” Lynch sneered. “Old man Vance sends his regards. And he says thank you for raising his grandchildren so nicely.”
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