As Luca stepped through the threshold, the silence of the corridor was shattered by a hail of silenced gunfire.

Zip-zip-zip.

Bullets chipped harmlessly off the marble pillars and starred the reinforced glass windows, spraying tiny crystal diamonds across the floor.

“Down!” Luca yelled, dropping into a tactical slide behind a heavy marble console table.

Behind him, I gripped the metal frame of Gabriel’s hospital bed, hauling it out of the master suite and into the corridor just as another burst of automatic fire tore through the wall where we had been standing a second earlier.

“Keep moving!” Gabriel roared. Despite his paralyzed legs dragging uselessly behind him, he braced his massive upper body against the mattress, raised the submachine gun with one hand, and fired a blind, suppression burst down the eastern corridor.

Rat-tat-tat-tat.

The sound was deafening in the confined space, echoing off the glass and marble. A cry of pain echoed from down the hall, followed by the clatter of a dropped weapon.

“They’re falling back to the elevators!” Luca shouted, firing two controlled shots around the corner of the library entrance. “They weren't expecting us to push the fight!”

“They expected a sick man in a bed, not a siege,” I snapped, pushing the hospital bed forward like a rolling barricade while keeping the IV pole upright with my other hand. “Where is the wall safe, Gabriel?”

“Third door on the right,” Gabriel panted, sweat pouring down his temples as the exertion strained his infected spine. “The portrait of my grandfather holding the cigar.”

“Cover me!” I yelled to Luca.

Before Luca could object, I sprinted past the bed toward the heavy mahogany door of Gabriel’s private study. The corridor was littered with spent brass casings and shattered plaster. I reached the third door, threw it open, and flicked on the desk lamp.

There it was—a massive oil portrait of an elderly, stern-faced patriarch puffing on a thick cigar, mounted heavily on the walnut-paneled wall.

I grabbed the bottom edge of the heavy painting, swung it upward like a hinged door, and revealed a heavy digital keypad wall safe glowing with a soft blue numerical display.

“Gabriel!” I called out over the distant sound of shouting from the elevator lobby. “What’s the combination?”

From the hallway, Gabriel’s voice rang out, tight with pain and concentration. “It’s not a code! It’s a biometric scanner behind the painting frame! Press your thumb into the small brass indentation on the right!”

I rushed back to the safe, spotted the small brass depression hidden in the dark wood grain of the casing, and pressed my right thumb firmly against it.

Bzzz-click.

The heavy steel door of the safe swung outward on well-oiled hinges. Inside sat stacks of bearer bonds, emergency cash, spare sidearms, and a heavy, old-fashioned brass Yale key attached to a leather fob stamped with the Moretti family crest.

I grabbed the key and turned around just as a shadow fell across the study doorway.

A tall, impeccably dressed man in a charcoal suit stood framed in the doorway, holding a silenced pistol pointed directly at my chest.

It wasn't a hired hitman.

It was Vincent Moretti.

His blonde hair was neatly combed, his tie was perfectly knotted, and his face wore a mask of cold, calculating disappointment.

“Well, well,” Vincent murmured, his voice smooth and devoid of any warmth. “The stubborn nurse who wouldn't stay in her lane. Cousin Gabriel always did have a terrible habit of collecting stray dogs.”

I didn't flinch. I kept my hand closed tightly around the heavy brass key in my pocket, my eyes locked onto the barrel of his gun.

“You botched the surgery, Vincent,” I said steadily, my voice echoing in the quiet study. “A laminectomy on the lower lumbar spine to induce progressive paralysis and sepsis. Very clean. Very professional. Too bad you couldn't finish the job before I read the chart.”

Vincent’s smile didn't reach his eyes. It hardened into something thin and venomous. “Gabriel was a dinoNextr. He ruled with fear and iron fists in an era that requires strategy, diplomacy, and clean corporate hands. I saved our family from the feds, and I was going to give him a peaceful, dignified retirement in a pine box. You should have taken the money and caught the elevator when you had the chance.”

He raised the pistol another inch, his finger tightening on the trigger.

“Say goodbye, nurse.”

Before the hammer could drop, a heavy shadow slammed into Vincent from the side with the force of a freight train.

Luca Ferraro tackled Vincent hard against the mahogany bookshelf, sending rare leather-bound volumes crashing to the floor in a chaotic avalanche. Vincent’s pistol went flying across the room, skittering beneath the heavy oak desk.

“Traitor!” Luca snarled, pinning Vincent’s arms against the floor with his knee.

Vincent let out a sharp gasp of air, but even pinned, a twisted, triumphant smile broke across his face. He didn't look scared. He looked up at the ceiling toward the hallway.

“You’re too late, Luca,” Vincent wheezed, laughing softly. “I didn't come alone. The entire building is locked down. By sunrise, the board of directors—and the police—will find Gabriel dead in his bed, and you two standing over my corpse for self-defense.”

From the hallway outside the study, the heavy, deliberate sound of slow, heavy footsteps echoed across the marble floor.

It wasn't the hurried footsteps of hitmen. It was the heavy, dragging roll of hospital bed wheels.

Gabriel Moretti was wheeling himself down the corridor, holding a submachine gun across his lap, his eyes burning with a cold, righteous fury that promised absolute annihilation.