Kidnapping the Assassin: The Mafia Don’s Fatal Mistake

The Geneva Trap

Chapter 21

[Elara]

The private medical facility in Geneva sat on the edge of Lake Leman, isolated and surrounded by dense alpine forest. It was designed to look like a luxury retreat, not a fortress.

That was a mistake.

The syndicate jet touched down at a private airstrip three miles away. The storm from Marseille had followed us into Switzerland. I stepped off the plane into the freezing, driving rain, chambering a round into my assault rifle.

Twelve of Cassian’s best men flanked me. They moved with silent, lethal precision, spreading out toward the armored SUVs waiting on the tarmac.

"Comms check," I ordered, tapping my earpiece.

"Alpha team secure," Vincenzo’s replacement, a grizzled Capo named Matteo, replied through the static.

"We go in hard and fast," I told them, climbing into the passenger seat of the lead SUV. "The High Table doesn't take hostages. If they've breached Lily’s floor, we don't clear rooms. We shoot through the walls."

The drive to the clinic took six agonizing minutes.

Every second felt like an hour. My heart pounded a frantic, suffocating rhythm against my ribs. I had lost Cassian to the river. I had lost the memory of the man who loved me to the Corsicans. If I lost Lily today, there would be nothing tethering me to this earth. I would burn the globe to ash and happily die in the flames.

The SUVs screeched to a halt outside the main entrance of the clinic.

The glass automatic doors were shattered. Two of my private security guards lay dead on the pristine white steps, their blood washing away in the rain.

"Move!" I barked, kicking my door open.

We stormed the lobby. It was a slaughterhouse. Nurses and security personnel were scattered across the marble floor. The High Table hadn't just come for Lily; they were making a terrifying statement.

"Stairs," I ordered, ignoring the elevators. "Lily is on the fourth floor. Intensive care."

We ran up the stairwell, our boots echoing off the concrete walls. The silence in the building was completely unnatural. We didn't encounter a single High Table enforcer on the second or third floors.

We reached the heavy fire doors of the fourth floor.

I pressed my back against the wall, signaling Matteo to take the opposite side. I held up three fingers. Two. One.

I kicked the door open and spun into the hallway, rifle raised.

The corridor was completely empty. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The door to Room 412 Lily’s room stood wide open at the end of the hall.

My breath caught. I broke protocol, sprinting down the hallway, ignoring the corners and blind spots.

"Elara, wait! It’s a funnel!" Matteo yelled behind me.

I didn't listen. I reached Room 412 and tore through the doorway.

The hospital bed was empty.

The ventilator was violently unplugged, the monitors smashed. The crisp white sheets were torn and stained with a terrifying amount of fresh blood.

"No," I gasped, dropping my rifle. It clattered against the linoleum floor.

I stumbled toward the bed, my hands blindly touching the torn sheets. It couldn't be happening. I had paid millions. I had killed hundreds. I had sacrificed my own soul to keep this room safe.

"Looking for someone, Viper?"

The voice came from the dark corner of the room.

I spun around, drawing my sidearm in a fraction of a second.

A man stepped out of the shadows. He wore a pristine white suit, completely out of place in a warzone. He had a gold lapel pin marking him as an Arbiter of the High Table. He held a suppressed pistol, aiming it directly at my chest.

"Where is she?" I snarled, my finger tightening on the trigger.

"Your sister is currently being loaded into a helicopter on the roof," the Arbiter smiled cruelly. "The Commission decided she makes a much better bargaining chip alive. But you... you are a loose end."

"Donna, get down!" Matteo screamed from the hallway.

Before I could react, the drop-ceiling panels above us exploded.

Three High Table assassins dropped directly into the hospital room from the ventilation shafts. They moved with impossible speed. One landed on my back, knocking the gun from my hand and driving me face-first into the linoleum floor.

The air was punched from my lungs.

Matteo and my men opened fire from the doorway, but it was too late. The Arbiter returned fire, taking Matteo in the chest. My men scrambled for cover in the hallway as the Arbiter’s assassins laid down heavy suppressing fire.

The man pinning me grabbed my hair, violently wrenching my head back. He pressed a cold, sharp blade to my throat.

"The Commission sends its regards," the Arbiter said, walking toward me, casually stepping over the broken medical equipment. "You should have stayed in the grave with your husband."

I closed my eyes, the cold steel biting into my skin.

I had failed. I had lost the man I loved, and now I was going to die on the floor of the room I had bled to protect, while the High Table flew away with my sister.

The Arbiter raised his gun, aiming at the center of my forehead to finish the job.

Suddenly, a deafening, terrifying roar echoed from the hallway outside. It wasn't the sound of gunfire. It was the mechanical scream of a high-powered engine.

The Arbiter frowned, turning his head toward the open doorway.

A black Ducati motorcycle tore through the fourth-floor corridor.

It didn't slow down. The rider launched the heavy machine directly through the doorway of Room 412, aiming the one-thousand-pound projectile straight at the Arbiter.

The Arbiter shrieked, diving out of the way. The motorcycle crashed violently into the far wall, shattering the drywall and pinning one of the assassins beneath its spinning rear tire.

The rider didn't crash with it. He had bailed at the last second, sliding across the slick linoleum floor.

He rose to his feet in the center of the room. He wore a cheap white t-shirt and a dark tactical vest. His right hand hung limply at his side, swollen and grotesquely dislocated.

In his left hand, he held a fully automatic submachine gun.

He didn't look like a mercenary. He looked like the god of war.

Cassian Rossi leveled the weapon, his dark eyes locking onto the man holding the knife to my throat.

"Get your hands off my wife," Cassian snarled, and pulled the trigger.