The makeshift barricade of the supply cart and the glass IV pole wedged beneath the handle buckled instantly, sending medical bottles, saline bags, and surgical trays crashing across the polished hardwood floor.

Through the dust and haze stepped two men dressed head-to-toe in tactical black, their faces concealed by dark neoprene balaclavas, suppressed submachine guns raised and sweeping the room with lethal precision.

They didn't expect Luca Ferraro to be waiting behind the overturned mattress near the window.

Puff-puff.

Two muffled shots from Luca’s Sig Nexter zipped across the bedroom. The lead operative staggered backward, dropping his weapon as a bullet caught him squarely in the shoulder, while the second operative instinctively dove to the side, rolling behind a marble pillar near the wet bar.

“Clear!” the second operative barked into a comms mic attached to his collar. “Target’s room is breached! Security chief is active—bring the second team up!”

Before the operative could bring his weapon back to bear on Luca, a heavy steel surgical tray came flying through the air like a razor-sharp frisbee, catching him squarely across the bridge of the nose with a sickening crunch.

He stumbled backward, clutching his face.

I stood behind the supply cart, my hands still gripping the edges of a heavy metal instrument case I had just hurled across the room. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, but my hands were dead steady.

“Nice throw,” Gabriel rumbled from the bed. Despite being paralyzed from the waist down, he had managed to haul his upper torso upright, his massive forearms braced against the mattress, his eyes locked onto the struggling operative with cold, predatory delight.

Before the dazed hitman could recover his footing, Luca closed the distance with terrifying speed. He slammed the butt of his pistol against the side of the man’s helmet, dropping him to the floor like a felled oak. The operative went limp, sliding into a motionless heap against the marble baseboard.

“That’s two,” Luca panted, keeping his weapon trained on the shattered doorway. “But the hallway is full of them. The second team is overriding the service elevator override right now.”

“How long?” I asked, grabbing a scalpel from an open tray and slipping it into the pocket of my scrubs.

“Maybe forty seconds before they reach this door.”

I turned my attention back to Gabriel. The antipyretic medication was finally breaking his fever, but his color was still dangerously ashen. The surgical wound on his lower back was leaking again, staining the crisp white hospital sheets with a dark, alarming crimson ring.

“We can’t hold this room indefinitely,” I said, scanning the penthouse layout in my mind. “Is there a panic room? A secondary escape route?”

Gabriel shook his head slowly. “My grandfather built this penthouse in the sixties. There are no panic rooms. Only a reinforced emergency stairwell behind the walk-in wardrobe, but the keypad requires Vincent’s biometric override or a master physical key.”

“Where is the master key?”

“In the wall safe behind the oil painting in my private study down the hall.”

Luca cursed under his breath. “The study is on the opposite side of the penthouse. If we step out into that hallway right now, we’re walking straight into a firing squad.”

“Then we don't walk,” Gabriel said, his slate eyes hardening into a terrifying resolve. He reached down and gripped the metal side-rail of the bed. “Luca, unlock the wheels on this bed frame. Now.”

Luca stared at him in utter disbelief. “Gabriel, you want to ride a hospital bed into a hallway gunfight?”

“I want to take my house back,” Gabriel growled, his voice echoing with the full, terrifying weight of the Moretti name. “Unlock the damn wheels, Luca. And hand me that submachine gun from the floor.”

I opened my mouth to argue—to remind him that he was septic, paralyzed, and bleeding internally—but looking into his eyes, I realized arguing with Gabriel Moretti was like trying to stop an oncoming freight train with a feather.

Instead, I reached down, flipped the locking levers on all four heavy-duty hospital bed casters, and grabbed a saline pole to use as a makeshift IV drip extension.

“If you die on this hallway carpet, Mr. Moretti,” I said calmly, “I am going to bill your estate for the extra paperwork.”

A sharp, barking laugh tore through Gabriel’s chest. He caught the submachine gun Luca tossed him, checked the safety with a flick of his scarred thumb, and nodded toward the shattered double doors.

“Open fire,” Gabriel whispered.

Luca kicked the remaining shards of the wooden door clear of the frame, raised his pistol, and stepped out into the dark, echoing hallway of the fifty-eighth floor.

The war for the Moretti empire had just begun.