Chapter 7 - Blood in the Courtyard
Downstairs, the grand marble foyer had become a war zone. Shards of custom stained glass littered the Persian rugs, and bullet holes scarred the white pillars where priceless oil paintings used to hang. Four of Antoine’s elite security detail held the grand staircase, their suppressed rifles spitting fire into the smoke-filled hall below.
Antoine stepped out onto the second-floor balcony, looking down through the shattered crystal chandelier at the courtyard doors below. Three men in black tactical gear had just blown the heavy front mahogany doors off their hinges with a localized explosive charge, pouring into the foyer with assault rifles raised.
"You're out of your depth, Maro!" a gravelly voice shouted from the smoke below—Marco Rossi, the eldest son of the syndicate boss, stepping over the threshold with a smoking submachine gun in his hands. "You spent a year playing nursemaid to a dead woman's brats! Your empire is rotting from the inside out, and tonight we take the port!"
Antoine raised his pistol, leaning over the wrought-iron balcony railing with cold, mechanical precision.
"You should have stayed in Chicago, Marco," Antoine said, his voice cutting cleanly through the ringing chaos of the room.
Before Marco could swing his weapon upward, Antoine fired twice. The silenced shots cracked like whips, and Marco dropped instantly, his assault rifle clattering against the marble floor. Panic erupted among the remaining intruders as Antoine’s men poured out from the flanking corridors, cutting off any hope of retreat. The courtyard turned into a slaughterhouse of shouted orders, shattering glass, and heavy tactical suppression fire.
Upstairs in the nursery, the sound of the gunfire rattled the windowpanes. Della sat huddled on the floor with the three toddlers, singing her grandmother's Tremé melody in a shaky, desperate whisper to keep them from screaming. The children pressed their small faces against her chest, their tiny hands clutching her blouse just as they had in the NICU eighteen months ago.
Suddenly, the heavy oak door of the nursery rattled violently.
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Della froze, her breath catching in her throat. The shooting downstairs had stopped, replaced by heavy, uneven footsteps trudging up the grand staircase.
"Della," a voice rasped from the hallway—a voice that wasn't Antoine’s.
