Chapter 4 - Someone Inside the House
Silvio dropped behind the security console.
A bullet buried itself in the wall where his head had been.
His technology specialist hit the floor.
“Stay down.”
Silvio pulled a compact flashlight from his jacket.
Emergency power should have activated immediately.
It did not.
That meant someone had disabled the backup system too.
Someone who knew the estate.
Another shot cracked through the dark.
Silvio moved toward the side exit.
He heard footsteps in the hallway.
Fast.
Controlled.
Not Grant.
Grant moved like a wealthy man who hired violence.
This was someone trained to deliver it.
Silvio opened the service door and stepped into the records corridor.
A shadow moved near the stairwell.
Silvio followed.
The intruder reached the lower gallery.
One of Silvio’s guards appeared from the opposite direction.
The intruder struck him and kept running.
Silvio closed the distance.
The man shoved through the kitchen.
Then through the loading entrance.
Silvio reached the rear courtyard just as a black sedan accelerated away.
He memorized the plate.
Three digits.
Then mud covered the rest.
His head of security ran toward him.
“What happened?”
“Someone came for the recordings.”
“Did they get them?”
“No.”
Silvio looked back at the house.
“But they knew exactly where we were.”
That bothered him more than the gunfire.
Only six people knew about the memory card.
Silvio.
His technology specialist.
Three senior security men.
And the estate manager.
One of them had talked.
At 2:17 a.m., Silvio received another call from the hospital.
Mia had awakened screaming.
He left immediately.
When he entered her room, she was sitting upright with Ethan beside her.
A nurse stood nearby.
Mia reached for Silvio.
He crossed the room.
“What happened?”
Mia whispered into his shirt.
“The garage man.”
Silvio looked at Ethan.
“What garage man?”
Ethan hesitated.
“The man Uncle Grant talks to sometimes.”
Silvio crouched.
“Where?”
“At the old garage behind the ballroom.”
“What did you hear?”
Ethan looked toward the door.
Silvio closed it.
Ethan lowered his voice.
“Uncle Grant said the first accident didn’t work right.”
Silvio went still.
“What first accident?”
“I don’t know.”
Mia began crying.
Ethan squeezed her hand.
Then he continued.
“He said this time there couldn’t be witnesses.”
Silvio’s pulse slowed in the dangerous way it always did before violence.
“Who was he talking to?”
“A man named Dean.”
Silvio recognized the name.
Dean Mercer.
Former mechanic.
Former marina contractor.
The same man who had inspected Mateo’s boat after the explosion.
The same man who had testified that Mateo’s negligence caused the fuel failure.
Silvio stood.
The pieces were no longer random.
They were forming a pattern.
Mateo’s death.
The stolen trust money.
The insurance policies.
The children in the SUV.
And now Dean Mercer.
Silvio called his investigator.
“Find Mercer.”
“I already started.”
“Make it faster.”
Silvio looked through the hospital window.
A figure stood across the street beside a parked motorcycle.
Helmet on.
Watching.
Silvio moved toward the glass.
The motorcycle pulled away.
His phone rang again.
This time it was the family attorney.
“Silvio, we have a problem.”
“What?”
“Someone filed an emergency petition twenty minutes ago.”
“For what?”
“To declare Ethan and Mia medically incapacitated.”
Silvio stared at the children.
“Who filed it?”
The attorney was silent for one beat too long.
“Lucinda.”
Silvio looked toward the hallway.
His sister was supposed to be under questioning.
May you like
Instead, while everyone focused on whether the children would recover, she had made her next move.
If she could not make them dead before Monday, she intended to make them legally powerless.
