It sounded like something out of my time in MI6.
A bomb going off –
Or a missile strike.
Caterina screamed, and I yelled at her, “Stay down!”
Then I ran out into the hallway to see what the fuck had just happened.
Seconds later, I found Niccolo pulling Sofia up to her feet. Both of them were covered in plaster dust and looked stunned.
Behind them, there was a bloody foot soldier in the foyer, lying deathly still amidst flaming debris.
The chandelier had fallen, and the crystals had shattered into a million shards on the floor.
The parlor doors had been ripped off their hinges –
And whatusedto be the parlor was now a burning crater. Daylight poured in through swirls of black smoke.
It looked like an entire section of the front portion of the house wasgone–
And I could hear the whir of helicopter blades nearby.
Shit –
Missile strike.
“Come on!” I barked as I hustled Sofia and Niccolo towards the interior of the house.
We made it 30 feet before the next explosion rocked the mansion. It came from somewhere upstairs.
The ceiling above our heads cracked in a dozen places, and more plaster dust rained down.
“Camorra?”I asked.
“Or someone they hired,” Niccolo coughed.
“We have to get everyone to safety, andIneed a way out of the mansion without them seeing me.”
“The tunnel,” Niccolo wheezed.
Lars had shown me the tunnel after Rome when I first started helping him train the new foot soldiers. It was a hidden passage that began in the west wing, went underground, and exited several hundred feet from the mansion.
I knew Alessandra had used it to escape when she first came here. Then a Turkish gangster had forced her to lead him back through the tunnel so he could assassinate everyone in the dead of night.
Didn’t quite work out the way he’d planned.
“Can you get everyone down to the tunnel?” I asked Niccolo. “Your brothers, sisters-in-law, and the servants?”
“Yes. What are you – ”
“I’ll see you down there,” I said, and took off running.
Not towards the tunnel, but in the opposite direction.
Another explosion rocked the house as I reached the armory.
It was a large stone room inside the mansion, stocked with all sorts of supplies: rifles, pistols, submachine guns, radios, bulletproof vests, and ammo.Lotsof ammo.
