Chapter 5 - The Infiltration
The sharp crunch of gravel shattered the silence.
It was moving fast—too fast for a routine patrol. Damian’s head snapped up, the vulnerability vanishing from his face in a fraction of a second, replaced instantly by the icy, impenetrable mask of the Romano Don.
Rounding the corner of the tall yew hedge was Luca Marino.
Luca was in his mid-forties, tall, broad-shouldered, and severe. He had been Damian’s right-hand man and security chief for fifteen years, a former marine who treated the protection of the Romano family as a sacred religious duty. He was dressed in a tailored charcoal-black suit, an earpiece coiling down behind his right ear, his jacket unbuttoned just enough to grant immediate access to the Glock 17 holstered at his left rib.
Luca was walking briskly, his jaw clenched, scanning the grounds. But as he turned into the courtyard and his eyes locked onto the teak bench, his stride hitched violently.
He stopped dead in the center of the flagstone path, five yards from the bench.
His eyes widened in sheer, uncomprehending shock. He looked at Damian, then down at the small child curled fast asleep on Damian’s lap, her dirty feet resting against his boss's beige trousers, her head nestled into the Don’s throat.
Luca’s hand involuntarily twitched toward his sidearm, then stopped, his brain failing to reconcile the visual data.
“Boss…” Luca began, his voice choked with pure disbelief. “What… how the hell did she get in?”
Damian didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t shift his position. He sat there, his left arm wrapped securely around Mia’s back, his right fist resting on his knee, his knuckles white around the pocket watch concealed within his grip.
“You tell me,” Damian said. The tone was dangerously even, like black ice over a frozen lake.
Luca took two hesitant steps forward, his eyes darting frantically across the garden perimeter. He tapped his earpiece, his voice rising in an urgent, strained whisper.
“Sector Four, report. Sector Four, who authorized an escort to the east garden?”
A burst of static came through the earpiece, followed by a confused response from the security gatehouse.
“East garden is clear, Chief. Boss is on the bench alone. No visitors logged.”
Luca’s face lost all its color. He stepped closer, dropping his voice to a hushed rasp so as not to wake the child.
“Boss, nobody reported a child entering. The front gates haven't opened since the supply truck cleared at noon. Thermal grid on the perimeter wall is green. The motion beams on the south fence haven't tripped once today.”
Damian’s eyes hardened into two pieces of polished obsidian.
“A three-year-old girl walked through a five-million-dollar security grid barefoot, Luca,” Damian murmured, the quiet rage vibrating beneath the calm surface of his words. “She walked past twelve men with carbines, crossed fifty yards of open lawn, climbed onto my lap, and went to sleep.”
Luca swallowed hard. In their world, a security failure of this magnitude was punishable by execution. A child walking through undetected meant a hit squad could have done the exact same thing. A sniper could have set up on the patio. A bomb could have been placed under the bench.
“I’ll lock the estate down immediately,” Luca said, reaching for his radio. “Every man sweeps the perimeter from the outer wall inward. If someone dropped her over the wall, they’re still on the grounds.”
“No,” Damian commanded, raising a single finger from his right fist.
Luca froze, his thumb hovering over the push-to-talk button on his lapel.
“Don’t touch that radio,” Damian said softly. “You call a general alarm, and sixty armed men start tearing this place apart. If there’s a spotter watching the grounds, they’ll know we found her.”
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“Boss, she could be bait,” Luca insisted, his eyes scanning the rooftops above the courtyard. “She could have an active transmitter on her. We don’t know who she belongs to.”
“I know who she belongs to,” Damian said.
