THE FIANCÉE’S DEADLY HONEYMOON PLOT

The darkness was suffocating.

Outside the heavy dining room doors, the sharp, concussive sounds of automatic gunfire shattered the quiet of the mansion. Men were shouting in a language I didn’t understand.

“Marco!” Dante yelled over the chaos. “Secure the doors!”

I heard the heavy thud of the mahogany doors being slammed shut, followed by the metallic sliding of the deadbolts.

“Emily,” Dante’s voice was right next to me in the dark. He grabbed my shoulder. His grip was painfully tight, grounding me in the sheer terror of the moment. “Do you have Noah?”

“I have him,” I whispered, squeezing Noah tightly against my side. The little boy was shaking violently, his face buried in my apron.

“The Russians are here,” Adrian’s panicked voice echoed from the far end of the room. “Dante, they’re here for me! They want the money!”

“They want the master ledger!” Dante fired back. “The one Elena hid in Noah’s coat. If they get that ledger, they can dismantle my entire syndicate and seize the shipping ports.”

Suddenly, a flashlight beam cut through the dark.

Camilla had turned on the light from her cell phone. Her face looked pale and ghostly in the harsh glare.

“We need to get to the panic room,” Camilla said, her voice shrill with hysteria. “It’s in the basement. It’s reinforced steel.”

“Move,” Dante commanded.

Marco led the way, his gun drawn. Dante stayed behind me, keeping his body between the dining room doors and Noah.

We hurried through the servant’s corridor, a narrow hallway connecting the dining room to the kitchen. The sounds of boots stomping on the marble floors above us echoed like thunder. The Russians were already on the first floor.

We reached the kitchen. In the pantry, Marco moved a heavy shelf of canned goods, revealing a steel door set into the concrete foundation.

Beside the door was a digital keypad glowing with a faint red light.

Marco rapidly punched in the six-digit code.

A harsh buzz sounded. Access Denied.

Marco frowned. He punched it in again.

Access Denied.

“Boss, the code isn’t working,” Marco said, a note of genuine panic entering his gruff voice.

Dante pushed past him and typed in his personal override code.

Access Denied.

Dante slowly turned around. The beam of Marco’s tactical flashlight illuminated Camilla, who was standing a few feet away, clutching her silver purse.

“You changed the code,” Dante realized, his voice dangerously low.

Camilla swallowed hard, lifting her chin in a pathetic attempt at defiance.

“I changed it this morning,” she confessed. “Adrian told me the Russians were coming tonight. He said if things went wrong, I needed leverage.”

“Leverage?” I gasped. “There are men with assault rifles upstairs!”

“Open the door, Camilla,” Dante commanded, stepping toward her.

Camilla backed away, shaking her head. “Not until you sign over Noah’s trust to Adrian. I have the transfer papers in my bag. Sign them, and I’ll open the door. If you don’t, the Russians will breach the kitchen in two minutes, and they’ll kill all of us.”

She was willing to let a nine-year-old boy die just to secure a payday.

Adrian stepped up beside her, his gun still loosely gripped in his sweaty hand. “Just do it, Dante. It’s just money. Sign the papers, and we live.”

Dante stared at the woman he had almost married, and the brother he had trusted his entire life.

“You think the Russians are going to leave witnesses?” Dante asked coldly. “If they get in here, they kill everyone. Even you.”

Suddenly, the heavy oak doors leading to the kitchen splintered.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Someone was using a battering ram on the other side.

“Camilla, punch in the code!” Adrian screamed, finally realizing Dante was right.

Camilla lunged for the keypad. Her shaking fingers typed rapidly.

But in her panic, she fumbled the numbers.

Access Denied. System Locked for 5 Minutes.

The red light flashed menacingly.

Camilla let out a horrified shriek. “It locked! The system locked me out!”

CRACK.

The kitchen doors splintered again. The hinges were giving way. We had seconds left.

Marco raised his gun toward the door, preparing for a last stand.

Dante pulled a handgun from his tuxedo jacket, stepping in front of Noah and me.

“Emily,” Dante whispered without looking back. “Take Noah. Hide in the walk-in freezer. Don’t come out no matter what you hear.”

But as I looked at the massive kitchen, a memory flashed in my mind.

Four years of cleaning this ancient mansion. Four years of memorizing every crack, every draft, every hidden corner.

“Mr. Marino, wait!” I grabbed Dante’s arm.

He looked at me, surprised.

“The fireplace in the library,” I said rapidly. “It’s a Prohibition-era house. The fireplace is a false front. It leads to the old servant tunnels that run under the gardens. I found it last year when I was cleaning the flue.”

Dante’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. It comes out at the old boathouse on the lake.”

“The library is down the hall,” Marco said. “We have to cross the foyer to get there. They’ll see us.”

“It’s our only chance,” Dante said.

The kitchen doors finally gave way with a deafening crash, wood flying across the tiled floor.

“Go!” Dante roared.

Marco laid down suppressing fire into the darkness of the hallway, the muzzle flashes illuminating the kitchen in strobes of terrifying light.

I grabbed Noah’s hand and ran. We sprinted out the side door of the kitchen, Dante right behind us, firing blindly over his shoulder.

We hit the massive marble foyer. Flashlights cut through the darkness from the grand staircase.

“There!” a voice yelled in Russian.

Bullets chewed the marble pillars around us.

We dove into the library, Dante slamming the heavy oak doors shut.

“Emily, where is it?!” Dante yelled, rushing to barricade the doors with a heavy mahogany desk.

I ran to the massive stone fireplace. I reached inside the soot-covered chimney, feeling for the cold iron lever I had accidentally bumped a year ago with my broom.

My fingers brushed against cold metal. I pulled hard.

With a heavy groan, the entire back wall of the fireplace swung inward, revealing a pitch-black, narrow tunnel smelling of damp earth.

“Get in!” I told Noah, pushing him gently into the darkness.

Dante and Marco rushed toward the fireplace.

But as Marco stepped into the tunnel, the library doors were blown off their hinges.