Chapter 5 - THE HIDDEN KEY
Panic erupted in the distance. The muffled screams of the thirty-two guests in the dining room filtered through the heavy oak doors.
Dante didn't hesitate. Even in the pitch black, he moved with the predatory grace of a man raised in a violent world. He pulled a sleek black handgun from a hidden holster at his lower back.
"Get down!" Dante hissed. "Rachel, get Miss Evie behind the heavy leather sofa. Now!"
I dropped to my hands and knees, feeling my way across the thick Persian rug. My fingers brushed the cold metal wheel of Evelyn’s chair.
"I'm here, Mrs. Price," I whispered, my voice trembling. I found her hand. It was cold as ice. "I've got you. We need to move."
"My suitcase, Rachel. Please. Don't leave it."
Even now, with a rival mafia syndicate threatening to slaughter an entire party, she cared about that little blue suitcase. I grabbed the handle blindly, then guided her wheelchair behind the massive, bulletproof leather sofa that dominated the center of the study.
Victoria was sobbing uncontrollably near the fireplace. "They're going to kill us. My father promised they wouldn't hurt me! He promised!"
"Shut up, Victoria," Dante commanded sharply. The glow of his cell phone screen illuminated his harsh, angular face as he rapidly typed a message. "My security team is engaging them. But Thomas cut the main power grid. The backup generators should have kicked in by now. He sabotaged them."
"Why do they want the cottage?" I asked, crouching low beside Evelyn. "If the money is gone, why does Thomas need the deed to the property Evelyn lives in?"
Dante looked at Evelyn in the dim light of his phone screen. "Because of what's buried under the floorboards."
Evelyn nodded slowly. She reached up to her neck, where her signature string of pearls rested. With shaking fingers, she fumbled with the clasp. But she didn't remove the pearls. Instead, she pulled a long, thin gold chain from beneath the collar of her dress.
Hanging from the chain was a heavy, rusted iron key.
"Your mother knew Thomas was stealing from her," Evelyn told Dante softly. "She knew he was corrupt long before she died. She spent her last five years compiling evidence. Bank statements. Audio recordings. Confessions from the Moretti syndicate's own men. Enough evidence to put Thomas and the entire Moretti leadership in federal prison for multiple lifetimes."
My breath hitched. "And she hid it in the cottage?"
"In a floor safe beneath my bed," Evelyn confirmed. "She gave me the only key. She told me to hold onto it until you were ready, Dante. Until the day Thomas tried to make his final move against you."
Dante stared at the iron key. A profound sorrow washed over his face. "She knew. She knew the whole time, and she protected me from it."
Suddenly, a massive crash shook the study doors. Someone was hitting the heavy oak with a battering ram. The wood groaned, splitting down the middle.
"They're coming through!" Victoria screamed, covering her ears.
"Dante," Evelyn said urgently, pressing the iron key into his hand. "You have to get to the cottage. You have to get the evidence and give it to the authorities. It's the only way to end this. It's the only way to save Rachel's father."
Dante looked at the key, then at the splintering door. He gripped his gun tighter. "I am not leaving you here."
"I am eighty-two years old and in a wheelchair," Evelyn said, her voice filled with a fierce, uncompromising strength. "I will only slow you down. Go through the servant's passage. Rachel knows the way."
"No," I blurted out. I looked at the elderly woman who had shown me nothing but kindness. I thought of my own father, alone and hunted somewhere in the city. I knew what it meant to protect family. "I'm not leaving you, Mrs. Price. I'll push you. We can make it."
"Rachel, listen to me—"
Before Evelyn could finish, the study doors exploded inward.
Splinters of oak rained down on the rug. Three men in tactical gear stepped into the room, their weapons raised.
But they didn't shoot.
Instead, a fourth man stepped through the shattered doorway. He was dressed in a sharp charcoal suit, his gray hair perfectly styled. He held a silver revolver loosely at his side.
Thomas Haines. Victoria’s father.
Victoria scrambled out from behind the desk. "Dad! Dad, please! You said you wouldn't let them hurt me! Tell them to let Leo and me go!"
Thomas looked at his daughter with an expression of mild annoyance, as if she were a child throwing a tantrum in a grocery store. "I told you to make sure the old woman was gone before tonight, Victoria. You couldn't even handle a simple eviction."
He stepped further into the room. "Dante. Put the gun down. You're outnumbered ten to one."
Dante stood up slowly from behind the desk, his weapon leveled directly at Thomas's chest. "Where is Arthur Bennett, Thomas?"
Thomas smiled, a cold, empty expression. "Arthur? Oh, Arthur is currently sitting in the back of my van, taking a lovely tour of the Chicago River. My men are just waiting for my signal to let him out. Unfortunately, the water is very cold, and with his bad leg... well. He won't swim far."
A scream tore from my throat before I could stop it. "No! Let him go!"
Thomas's eyes shifted to me. He tilted his head. "Ah. The Bennett girl. I must admit, Rachel, your father put up quite a fight. Broke one of my men's jaws. He’s tough. But he's not bulletproof."
Thomas raised his silver revolver and pointed it directly at my face.
"Now," Thomas said casually. "Throw the key to the cottage on the floor, Evelyn. Or I blow Rachel's brains all over your nice Persian rug, and then I order my men to drown her father."
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the impact.
But the gunshot didn't come from Thomas.
It came from the darkness of the hallway behind him.
One of Thomas's tactical men dropped to the floor with a heavy thud, groaning in pain as a bullet shattered his kneecap.
Thomas spun around, raising his weapon.
Standing in the shattered doorway, leaning heavily on a thick wooden cane, was my father.
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Arthur Bennett's face was bruised and bleeding, his clothes soaked with water. But his eyes were blazing with a fury I had never seen before. In his free hand, he held a stolen tactical shotgun, leveled directly at Thomas Haines's head.
"You should have tied the knots tighter, Thomas," my father growled. "Now. Get away from my daughter."
