Chapter 2 - The Ambush at the Double Doors
The distance between the pantry corridor and Adrian Moretti’s private office was precisely thirty-two feet. For three days, Elena had traversed those thirty-two feet with the solemn, measured cadence of a monk walking to prayer. The floor was waxed to an obsidian sheen, reflecting the recessed amber spotlights overhead like black glass, and the walls were lined with oil paintings of nineteenth-century naval battles—grim depictions of frigates splintering against iron hulls, mirrors of the quiet violence that had established the Moretti dynasty.
Elena balanced the silver tray upon her left palm, her right hand reaching down to secure Winston’s makeshift collar—a piece of braided kitchen twine. “Stay,” she commanded in a sharp, authoritative murmur. “You sit right here by the radiator, do you understand? If Claire sees a single speck of golden fur on these runner rugs, she will have you turned into a decorative draught excluder.”
Winston cocked his head, his tail giving two enthusiastic thumps against the baseboard. His ears lifted, twitching toward the aroma of toasted sourdough and the faint, distinct scent of woodsmoke drifting from beneath the study doors.
Inside the office, the low, gravelly baritone of Nathan Cole, Adrian’s longtime security chief, was barely audible through the four-inch timber. Nathan had been Adrian’s shadow for two decades: broad-shouldered, stone-faced, wearing suits that concealed heavy ballistic armor, and possessing an emotional range that began at suspicion and ended at homicide.
Elena raised her right hand, her knuckle poised to rap three times against the brass monogrammed plate on the right door.
At that exact microsecond, Winston made his move.
The twine slipped from Elena’s fingers like silk. With a joyful, guttural yip, the puppy leaped upward, his front paws landing squarely on the rim of the silver tray. The tray pitched sideways at a fifteen-degree angle. Elena’s heart slammed into her throat; she lunged backward, executing a desperate, high-wire balancing act that miraculously kept the espresso cup from tumbling onto the floor. But the manila folder slid forward, the red-waxed document slipping free of its sleeve and fluttering into the air like a wounded gull.
Winston snapped his jaws shut mid-flight.
Chomp.
The thick cotton-parchment document, bearing the private signatures of three European port authorities, was clamped firmly between the puppy’s milk teeth.
“No!” Elena gasped, her voice choking on a scream. “Winston, drop it!”
The puppy did not drop it. He took Elena’s whispered terror as a glorious, unconditional declaration of play. His paws hit the polished walnut floor with a skittering click-clack, and with an insolent wag of his tail, he bolted straight for the one place on earth where no unauthorized living creature had set foot in a decade: the cracked open seam of Adrian Moretti’s private office.
Elena did not think. She did not calculate the financial consequences of losing her position, nor did she consider the four armed men standing inside that room whose sole directive was to eliminate unexpected intrusions. Survival instinct, honed by years of managing five younger siblings in a chaotic south-side household, took immediate command of her limbs.
She slammed the silver tray down onto an antique mahogany side table with a concussive clatter that sent the espresso sloshing over the saucer.
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“Winston!” she hissed, hitching her black skirt up by two inches with both hands and launching herself into a dead sprint through the opening.
The double doors swung wide, rebounding against the brass wall stops with a sharp, resonant crack that shattered the solemn morning silence of the executive wing. Elena burst through the threshold like an artillery shell, her chestnut hair coming loose from its tortoiseshell pins, her hazel eyes wild with pure, adrenaline-fueled desperation as she saw the small golden creature skidding across the vast, dark carpet directly toward the mahogany desk where the Don of Chicago sat reviewing his morning ledgers.
