Chapter 4 - The Broken Watch
The bloody pocket watch ticked loudly in the chilling silence of the destroyed cottage.
Cold winter wind howled through the shattered window, scattering snow across the torn floorboards.
Anthony didn't flinch.
He slowly bent down and picked up the heavy brass watch. His thumb brushed across the cracked glass, smearing the fresh blood.
“Marcus,” Anthony whispered.
Victoria’s cruel smile widened. “Your loyal guard dog didn't want to let my friends through the front gate. He was very stubborn. Until he wasn't.”
Anthony’s men immediately drew their weapons, forming a protective circle around Anthony, Rosa, Lily, and me.
“Who is out there?” Anthony demanded, his voice dropping to a lethal calm.
“The people you should have respected,” Victoria sneered. “The Rossi family.”
Rosa let out a strangled gasp. She grabbed my arm, her swollen fingers digging into my skin.
The Rossis. The most violent rival syndicate in the city. The family that had sworn to wipe out the Marinos for the past two decades.
“You sold me out to the Rossis,” Anthony said, stepping toward Victoria. “You poisoned my wife, framed an innocent nurse, and now you’ve invited my enemies onto my property.”
“I’m taking what I deserve!” Victoria snapped, dropping the elegant charade entirely. “I wasted three years playing the perfect, submissive fiancée to a man who still cries over a dead woman and eats dinner with his maid! The Rossis promised me half your territory once you’re gone.”
Anthony looked down at the bloody watch in his hand.
Then he looked at the torn floorboards.
“What was in the floor, Victoria?”
“Leverage,” she smiled. “The evidence your precious Elena gathered. She kept a diary of every politician, judge, and police commissioner I bribed for the Rossis while pretending to be your loyal friend. If you had found it, I would have gone to federal prison. So I took it.”
Anthony’s jaw locked. “Where is Marcus?”
Before Victoria could answer, a heavy, dragging sound came from the porch outside.
A massive shadow blocked the doorway.
It was Marcus.
He was bleeding heavily from his shoulder, his suit torn, leaning heavily against the doorframe. But he was alive. And in his left hand, he held a heavy tactical shotgun.
“Boss,” Marcus grunted, spitting blood onto the snow. “Gate’s breached. We got three SUVs coming up the main drive.”
“Did you secure the perimeter?” Anthony asked, completely unfazed.
“Locked down. But they’re heavily armed. They want a war.”
Victoria laughed. “You can't win, Anthony. Give me the deed to the estate, transfer the offshore accounts, and maybe the Rossis will let your mother and the brat live.”
Anthony didn't look at her.
He turned to his men. “Lock her in the cellar. If she speaks, break her jaw.”
“You can't do this!” Victoria screamed as two massive guards grabbed her by the arms and dragged her out the back door. “The Rossis will burn this place to the ground!”
Her screams faded into the freezing wind.
Anthony turned to me.
“Claire.”
I jumped. “Yes, sir?”
“Take my mother and my daughter. Go through the underground wine cellar. It connects to the panic room beneath the main house. Do not come out until I open the door.”
“I’m not leaving you, Daddy!” Lily cried, tears streaming down her face.
Anthony knelt in the snow and glass. He pulled his daughter into a fierce hug.
“You are the bravest girl in the world, Lily. But I need you to protect Grandma for me. Can you do that?”
Lily sniffled and nodded into his shoulder.
Anthony stood up and looked at me. His eyes were no longer cold. They were filled with desperate trust.
“Keep them safe, Claire. Please.”
“I will,” I promised, my voice steady despite the terror shaking my bones.
I grabbed the handles of Rosa’s wheelchair and pushed her quickly through the back door, Lily holding tightly to my apron strings.
We hurried through the freezing dark, slipping on the icy path until we reached the heavy iron doors of the root cellar.
I pulled them open, and we descended into the damp, stone corridors beneath the estate.
Gunfire suddenly erupted above us.
Loud, terrifying bursts of automatic weapons echoing through the night.
Lily screamed and covered her ears.
“Keep moving!” Rosa urged, her voice remarkably calm for a woman who had just had her cottage destroyed. “Down the left hall, Claire!”
We navigated the maze of dusty wine racks until we reached a thick steel door hidden behind a fake wall of oak barrels. Rosa punched in a code on a hidden keypad.
The door hissed open.
We rushed inside. It was a secure bunker, lined with monitors displaying the estate’s security cameras.
I locked the steel door behind us and collapsed against it, breathing heavily.
Lily ran to the monitors, her tiny fingers pressing against the glowing screens.
“I can't see Daddy!” she cried.
I walked over. The cameras showed Anthony’s men returning fire from the mansion's balconies. The front lawn was chaotic, lit by the headlights of the Rossi SUVs.
But as I looked at the monitor showing the main foyer, my heart stopped.
The front doors of the mansion had been blown open.
And standing in the grand entryway, surrounded by armed Rossi men, was a young man with his hands tied behind his back.
He was bruised and bleeding.
I pressed my hand to the glass screen.
“No,” I whispered, the air leaving my lungs.
It was Tommy.
My younger brother.
The brother I had been sending my paychecks to for college.
One of the Rossi men grabbed Tommy by the hair and forced him to his knees in front of the camera.
May you like
The man held up a handwritten sign to the lens.
It read: OPEN THE BUNKER, OR THE MAID’S BROTHER DIES.
