Chapter 22 - The bloodied staircase
The first contractor never saw the shadow coming through the smoke. Richard hooked his left arm around the man's tactical helmet, twisting sharply until vertebrae snapped with a dry, violent crack. Before the falling body hit the rug, Richard stripped the tactical knife from the soldier's vest and drove it upward under the jawline of the second mercenary, using the dying man’s frame as a human shield against the third soldier’s burst of automatic fire.
Bullets tore into Kevlar and flesh, spraying Richard's face with hot crimson. Ignoring the blinding sting, Richard leveled his .45 over the corpse's shoulder and fired two rounds into the third shooter’s unprotected visor. The glass shattered; the man collapsed backward into the corridor.
Silence dropped like a heavy velvet curtain over the second floor, broken only by Richard’s ragged, wheezing breaths. Blood dripped steadily from his left forearm where a stray round had grazed the flesh to the bone. He didn't care. The adrenaline in his veins was pure napalm.
He snatched up an abandoned MPX submachine gun, slapped a fresh drum onto the receiver, and stepped into the long gallery hallway.
The estate had become a slaughterhouse. Faint emergency red strips flickered along the baseboards, casting long, bloody shadows across the framed Renaissance oil paintings. Downstairs in the grand foyer, the crack of gunfire was sporadic now—the sickening sound of mop-up executions.
Richard moved like a phantom along the mezzanine, hugging the balustrade. Peering down into the two-story foyer beneath the massive crystal chandelier, his stomach dropped.
Viktor, his most loyal lieutenant and childhood friend, was kneeling on the shattered glass of the entryway, his hands zip-tied behind his back. Two black-clad operators held assault rifles to Viktor's temples. Standing over him, adjusting the cufflinks of an immaculate charcoal three-piece suit, was a man whose face had haunted Richard's nightmares for three decades.
Arthur Bellacorte looked older, his hair silver at the temples, but the cold, dead arrogance in his pale blue eyes had not aged a day. Beside him stood Elena, her fingers resting lightly on the pommel of a holstered pistol, looking at Viktor as if he were nothing more than a stray dog waiting to be put down.
"Thirty years rotting in the jungles of Paraguay while my kid brother lived in the palace of our ancestors," Arthur said, his voice echoing cleanly off the marble walls below. "Tell me, Viktor... where is the boy? Where is the little bastard my operatives tracked from Zurich?"
Viktor spat a glob of blood onto Arthur’s polished oxfords. "Go to hell, Arthur. The boy belongs to his grandfather. A real man who protects blood, not a coward who sells it to highest bidder."
Arthur sighed, pulling a vintage gold-plated revolver from his inner coat pocket. "Blood? Noah isn't just blood, Viktor. Noah is the cryptographic key to forty billion dollars in decentralized bearer bonds our father stole from the global cartels before he died. Did you really think Richard kept that little orphan for sentiment? My brother is a monster, just like me."
Up on the balcony, Richard’s grip on the railing creaked. His mind raced. *The cryptographic key?* Richard had pulled Noah out of the frozen snow because he was his flesh and blood—had Sarah lied? Had someone planted the boy in his life with a bigger design?
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Before Richard could process the revelation, Arthur cocked the revolver's hammer and pressed the barrel to the center of Viktor's forehead.
"Last chance, old friend," Arthur whispered. "Where is the safe room?"
