Chapter 114
Rachel
Inside The Mansion
Iwas in the kitchen getting a snack when I heard the first explosion.
Felt it, really, as the entire mansion shuddered along with the deafening thunderclap.
It sounded like something out of my time in MI6.
A bomb going off –
Or a missile strike.
Caterina screamed, and I yelled at her, “Stay down!”
Then I ran out into the hallway to see what the fuck had just happened.
Seconds later, I found Niccolo pulling Sofia up to her feet. Both of them were covered in plaster dust and looked stunned.
Behind them, there was a bloody foot soldier in the foyer, lying deathly still amidst flaming debris.
The chandelier had fallen, and the crystals had shattered into a million shards on the floor.
The parlor doors had been ripped off their hinges –
And what used to be the parlor was now a burning crater. Daylight poured in through swirls of black smoke.
It looked like an entire section of the front portion of the house was gone –
And I could hear the whir of helicopter blades nearby.
Shit –
Missile strike.
“Come on!” I barked as I hustled Sofia and Niccolo towards the interior of the house.
We made it 30 feet before the next explosion rocked the mansion. It came from somewhere upstairs.
The ceiling above our heads cracked in a dozen places, and more plaster dust rained down.
“Camorra?” I asked.
“Or someone they hired,” Niccolo coughed.
“We have to get everyone to safety, and I need a way out of the mansion without them seeing me.”
“The tunnel,” Niccolo wheezed.
Lars had shown me the tunnel after Rome when I first started helping him train the new foot soldiers. It was a hidden passage that began in the west wing, went underground, and exited several hundred feet from the mansion.
I knew Alessandra had used it to escape when she first came here. Then a Turkish gangster had forced her to lead him back through the tunnel so he could assassinate everyone in the dead of night.
Didn’t quite work out the way he’d planned.
“Can you get everyone down to the tunnel?” I asked Niccolo. “Your brothers, sisters-in-law, and the servants?”
“Yes. What are you – ”
“I’ll see you down there,” I said, and took off running.
Not towards the tunnel, but in the opposite direction.
Another explosion rocked the house as I reached the armory.
It was a large stone room inside the mansion, stocked with all sorts of supplies: rifles, pistols, submachine guns, radios, bulletproof vests, and ammo. Lots of ammo.
Lucca, Tullio, and Santino, three of the family’s foot soldiers, were inside.
“What the hell is going on?” Lucca asked, his eyes wide and fearful.
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” I said as I grabbed a walkie-talkie charging on one of the shelves. “This is Rachel – does anyone have eyes on the scene? Over.”
The walkie-talkie crackled, and a voice said, “This is Mazzi out in the garage. Five helicopters are circling the house. I think they’re firing missiles out of their side doors. Over.”
“Are they military helicopters?” I asked. “Over.”
“No, they look like civilian copters, but there are soldiers inside – OH, GOD!”
There was a distant explosion –
And Mazzi’s radio cut to static.
One of the choppers must have hit the garage.
“Shit,” I growled, then turned to the three foot soldiers. “I have to ask you to do something extremely dangerous, but I need you to do it, or every single person in this house is going to die.”
All three men looked at me in terror.
“What?” Santino asked in a trembling voice.
I passed each of them an M4 rifle and a duffel bag full of loaded magazines. “I need you to get to the roof and engage those choppers. You’re not trying to bring them down – you’re just trying to distract them.”
“What happens if they shoot missiles at us?” Tullio asked.
“Stay near the doorways to the third floor. Get back down the stairs if you see them start to aim.”
“And if we can’t get down the stairs in time?”
“Then take as many sons of bitches with you as you can.”
“What’re YOU gonna do?!” Santino asked.
I grabbed a suppressed Heckler & Koch M110A1 from its mount on the wall, plus a small knapsack filled with explosive-tipped bullets.
It was the exact same type of gun and ammunition that I’d used when I’d tried to kill Dario months before.
I just hoped I was a lot more successful this time.
“I’m going to go take out some fucking helicopters,” I said before I ran out of the room.