The guards holding Victoria staggered backward, coughing violently as the thick, acrid smoke swallowed the room in a suffocating shroud of white. In the blinding chaos, the iron-clad grip on her arms vanished. Driven purely by maternal instinct and adrenaline, Victoria lunged forward through the haze, her hands outstretched in the dark until her fingers brushed the warm wood of the high chair. She scooped Leo into her arms, pressing the crying baby fiercely against her chest as the sharp sound of suppressed gunfire cracked through the kitchen. A bullet whined past her ear, splintering the mahogany doorframe with a sharp, explosive pop. Someone was closing in through the fog, heavy boots crunching over the broken glass with terrifying speed.
«This way!» a gravelly, unfamiliar voice hissed from the direction of the shattered terrace doors, cutting sharply through the din. A gloved hand gripped Victoria by the shoulder, yanking her hard away from the kitchen and out into the biting morning air.
Stumbling blind, her lungs burning from the chemical smoke, Victoria sprinted through the courtyard while the world behind her dissolved into total anarchy. Shouts echoed from the front gates, followed by the heavy, metallic roar of a revving engine that didn’t sound like Eleanor’s town cars. Her rescuer—a broad-shouldered silhouette clad in tactical gear—shoved her violently into the back seat of a idling black SUV before diving into the driver’s side and slamming the pedal to the floor. The tires shrieked against the gravel, kicking up a storm of dust as they rocketed out of the estate’s private lane just as the main security alarm began to wail its deafening, automated warning.
Leo wailed in her arms, his small body trembling from the cold wind howling through the shattered rear window of the getaway vehicle. Panting heavily, Victoria checked her son over frantically in the dim light of the dashboard, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. Everyone was accounted for—he was unhurt. But as she looked up from the child, her eyes locked onto the driver’s profile in the rearview mirror, and the blood froze in her veins. The man pulled down his black tactical balaclava, revealing a sharp jawline, a familiar jagged scar across his cheek, and eyes that mirrored her own deep, haunting past. Julian’s younger brother, David—the uncle officially declared dead in a suspicious mountaineering accident five years ago—winked through the glass.
«Hold on tight, Tori,» David muttered, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as three black sedans rounded the corner behind them with high beams flashing. «Mother brought a lot of friends to the party, and we aren’t out of the woods yet.»
Before Victoria could even draw breath to demand an explanation, the side armor of their SUV shuddered under a devastating barrage of automatic gunfire, and the rear tires blew out with a deafening pop.