Chapter 6 - Blood on the Payroll
Rain whipped through the shattered glass, drenching the silk curtains and turning the bedroom carpet into a slick morass of mud and gunpowder. Outside, the slate tiles of the conservatory roof pitched sharply downward toward the formal gardens. Below, a solitary figure in a dark trench coat was sprinting through the storm toward the detached garage complex.
Dr. Gable.
I did not take the stairs. I climbed through the splintered window frame, kicked away the remaining shards of glass, and hit the wet slate roof in a controlled slide. Water rushed beneath my dress shoes. Halfway down the pitch, I dug the heel of my boot into the copper gutter, absorbed the shock, and vaulted twelve feet down onto the gravel path below.
Mud sprayed across my knees as I absorbed the landing. The concussive ringing in my ears had not faded, but my vision narrowed into pure predatory clarity.
Up ahead, the side door to the four-bay garage stood ajar. A yellow interior light flickered inside.
I approached along the wet stone wall, holding my weapon close to my chest in a high-compressed ready position. The estate's emergency sirens wailed through the driving rain, but the perimeter jammer had cut the outside world away entirely. Inside this fence line, we were wolves hunting in an iron cage.
I reached the threshold, sliced the angle with my barrel, and entered.
The garage housed four vehicles: two armored Cadillac Escalades, my vintage Aston Martin, and a utility van used by the grounds crew. The rear double doors of the utility van were swung wide open.
Inside the back of the van, someone was hastily zip-tying heavy black hard cases to the anchor rings.
It was not Dr. Gable.
It was Sarah, the second nanny—a quiet, twenty-six-year-old girl with a nursing degree whom my hiring agency had thoroughly vetted four months ago. She was soaked to the bone, her blonde hair plastered to her skull, wearing grease-stained tactical pants over her uniform. In her tactical belt was an encrypted radio and a suppressed Glock 19.
Gable stood beside her, his tweed jacket discarded, checking the seals on the insulated medical cooler he had snatched from the nursery.
“Load the secondary frequencies,” Gable snapped at her, wiping blood from his cheek where my flying glass had tagged him. “The jammer will drop the moment Moretti’s outside network notices the heartbeat ping failure. We have seven minutes before state troopers hit the gate.”
“The baby monitors are already wiped,” Sarah said, her voice completely devoid of the sweet, gentle cadence she used when singing Brahms' lullabies to Nora. “Did you trigger the sub-audible spike?”
“The girl ruined it,” Gable spat. “The little rat under the crib pulled the ground cable before the resonance hit peak. We take the Escalade. Ram the south gate.”
I stepped out from behind the chassis of the Aston Martin.
“You aren’t driving anywhere, Sarah.”
Both heads snapped toward me.
Sarah’s reflexes were terrifyingly professional. She didn't gasp; she didn't hesitate. She dropped to a low crouch, drawing her Glock with textbook efficiency.
Crack. Crack.
I fired twice through the windshield of the Aston Martin before her barrel could align with my chest. The first round shattered the safety glass; the second struck her right clavicle, spinning her violently against the interior paneling of the van. Her weapon clattered across the corrugated steel floor.
Gable lunged backward, raising his own pistol, using the frame of the van’s door as cover.
I charged forward without breaking cadence, firing three rounds into the thin metal sheet of the door at chest level. Gable screamed in agony as high-velocity lead punched through the sheet metal, shattering his left elbow and sending the medical cooler tumbling into the motor oil pooling on the floor.
Before he could raise his weapon with his remaining hand, I closed the distance.
I kicked his wrist, sending his automatic skidding into the dark corner under a workbench, gripped him by the throat, and slammed his skull backward against the steel pillar of the car lift.
The sound of his bone hitting metal was wet and dull.
Gable slid down the post, gasping for breath, coughing red foam onto his white dress shirt.
Behind him, Sarah lay clutching her shoulder, groaning through clenched teeth. I kicked her fallen Glock far out of reach, then knelt on Gable’s chest, pressing the hot muzzle of my automatic directly into the soft flesh under his chin.
“Who hired you?” I whispered.
Rain drummed against the corrugated metal roof like machine-gun fire. Gable looked up at me through swollen eyelids, his lips peeling back into a horrific, bloodstained grin.
“You... you think you’re the only monster your father created, Adrien?” Gable wheezed, blood bubbling through his teeth. “You sit in that mansion... pretending your hands are clean... pretending your children are angels...”
I pressed the barrel harder, forcing his head back until his spine arched. “Names. Give me the name, or I will use Sarah’s surgical scissors to take your fingers off one joint at a time.”
“It’s not a rival family,” Sarah gasped from the floor of the van, her face pale from blood loss. She looked at me with venom in her eyes. “Kill us if you want, Moretti. It doesn't stop it. The auction is already open.”
I frowned, keeping my weight on Gable. “What auction?”
“Julian’s legacy,” Sarah choked out. “Julian didn't die broke. He sold the master digital keys to your father’s offshore ledger to a syndicate in Macau. But to unlock the cold wallets, the biometric key requires two living Moretti DNA profiles. Julian gave his sample before he died. He needed Nora, Theo, or Miles to authorize the second half.”
My blood ran colder than the autumn rain outside.
This had never been about an assassination or revenge for an old sibling rivalry. My children weren’t just targets. They were living, breathing biological encryption keys to billions of dollars of illicit family reserves that my father had hidden across the globe.
“And the acoustic emitter?” I demanded.
“To hollow their minds out,” Gable whispered, laughing wetly. “A damaged brain doesn't resist. A baby that screams until its nervous system collapses is easy to carry through an airport without drawing attention. People just think it’s a sick child... traveling for care...”
Disgust—vile, suffocating disgust—choked my throat.
I struck Gable across the temple with the heavy butt of my pistol. The doctor’s head snapped sideways, and his eyes rolled back as he slumped unconscious into the oil slick.
I turned toward Sarah. She was dragging herself backward, leaving a thick smear of crimson along the floorboards.
I didn't shoot her. Death was too quick, too merciful for people who turned infant cribs into weapons.
I keyed my personal radio. “Marco. Send two recovery men to the garage. We have two live packages. Bring zip-cuffs, medical coagulant, and the interrogation kit.”
Marco’s voice came back through the static, urgent and breathless.
“Boss... forget the garage. You need to come back to the main house immediately.”
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“What happened? Did Gable have a third operative?”
“No, Boss,” Marco said, his voice tightening with a cold dread I had never heard in him before. “It’s Sophie. She just walked into the private study. She’s standing in front of your father’s portrait, Boss... and she says someone is talking to her through the canvas.”
