Kidnapping the Assassin: The Mafia Don’s Fatal Mistake

The Physics of Devotion

Chapter 40

**[Cassian]**

The ballistic glass on the second-floor landing was mil-spec, designed to stop a .50 caliber sniper round. Shooting it was useless. 

Arthur thought he had trapped me. He thought the Don of the Rossi Syndicate would beat his fists against an invisible wall while his family died upstairs. The Weaver miscalculated one fundamental flaw in his own architecture. 

He assumed I cared about the house. 

I didn't run up the grand staircase. I holstered my weapon, sprinting back toward the burning foyer. The smoke was thick, acrid, and blinding, but I knew the layout of my home by heart. I headed straight for the structural support pillars lining the eastern corridor the pillars directly beneath my private study. 

I found Matteo’s second-in-command, a massive Capo named Luca, bleeding from a shoulder wound but returning fire against the Guild apprentices pushing through the shattered front doors. 

"Luca!" I roared, sliding into cover beside him. "The satchel charges! Give them to me!" 

Luca didn't question the order. He unclipped two heavy blocks of C4 from his tactical rig and shoved them into my hands. 

"Boss, we're losing the ground floor!" Luca yelled over the gunfire. "If we don't fall back to the basement, they'll overrun us!"

"Hold the line for two minutes!" I commanded, grabbing the detonator. "If the house comes down on us, you die fighting!"

I didn't wait for his response. I sprinted into the east corridor. The smoke was suffocating, burning my lungs. I reached the massive, load-bearing marble pillar directly beneath the center of my study upstairs. 

The bunker was a concrete cube suspended within the architecture of the house. It was impenetrable from the sides, and the door was titanium. But gravity is a universal constant. 

I slapped both blocks of C4 onto the base of the marble pillar. 

I didn't run to a safe distance. I backed up twenty feet, ducked behind a heavy mahogany credenza, and pressed the detonator. 

The explosion was catastrophic. 

The blast wave tore through the corridor, shattering every window on the ground floor. The marble pillar disintegrated into dust and shrapnel. The entire eastern wing of the Rossi estate groaned, a terrifying, deep structural scream of failing steel and cracking wood. 

The ceiling above me bowed violently downward. 

With a deafening crash, the floor of my private study completely collapsed. The heavy oak desk, the bookshelves, and the titanium door of the bunker plunged through the ceiling, raining debris into the ground-floor corridor. 

The concrete cube of the bunker plummeted ten feet, smashing into the wreckage below. 

The impact cracked the impenetrable concrete walls of the panic room. 

I didn't wait for the dust to settle. I scrambled over the burning debris, tearing through shattered wood and twisted rebar. I reached the cracked concrete wall of the bunker. There was a jagged, two-foot-wide fissure ripped open by the fall. 

I peered through the smoke into the darkness of the bunker. 

I heard a gunshot. Muffled, suppressed, but unmistakable. 

My heart completely stopped. The world narrowed to a pinpoint of absolute, agonizing terror. 

"Elara!" I roared, tearing at the concrete with my bare, scarred hands, ripping the jagged fissure wider. 

I threw myself through the hole, landing hard on the tilted, debris-covered floor of the bunker. 

The room was illuminated only by the red emergency backup lights. 

Arthur was standing on the slanted floor, his pristine gray suit dusted with ash. His suppressed pistol was raised. 

But he hadn't shot Lily. 

Elara was standing between Arthur and her sister. 

My wife stood perfectly upright, her chin held high, her gray eyes burning with absolute, unbroken defiance. Her emerald gown was stained dark with fresh blood. 

The bullet had struck Elara squarely in the right shoulder, burying itself deep into the muscle near her collarbone. She had physically thrown herself into the trajectory of the bullet to shield Lily and Leo. 

Arthur frowned, clearly irritated that she had moved so fast. He calmly adjusted his aim, preparing for a second shot. 

He didn't get the chance. 

I didn't shoot him. I wanted to feel his bones break. 

I launched myself across the small room with the terrifying, unhinged violence of a cornered predator. I slammed into Arthur like a freight train, driving him violently backward. We crashed through the open titanium doorway, tumbling out of the bunker and into the burning wreckage of the study above. 

We hit the uneven, debris-covered floor hard. 

Arthur lost his pistol in the fall, but the Weaver was not defenseless. He drew a sleek, stiletto blade from his sleeve, slashing blindly as we grappled in the smoke. The blade caught my forearm, slicing through the fabric of my tuxedo, but I didn't even feel the pain. 

I grabbed his wrist with my good left hand, twisting it brutally until the stiletto dropped into the ash. 

Arthur brought his knee up, striking me hard in the ribs, trying to throw me off. "You are fighting a war you lost before you were even born, Rossi!" he hissed, his aristocratic veneer finally cracking. 

I didn't argue. I didn't speak. 

I grabbed Arthur by the lapels of his expensive suit and hauled him to his feet. I drove my heavy cast the right hand I had broken to escape a cage for the woman I loved directly into the center of his chest. 

Ribs shattered under the fiberglass. Arthur gasped, blood instantly pooling in his mouth. 

I didn't stop. I hit him again. And again. I drove him backward through the smoke, until his back slammed against the jagged, splintered remnants of the balcony doors. 

Below us, the estate grounds were a warzone. The sirens wailed, the fire roared. 

Arthur looked at me, a bloody, arrogant smile touching his lips. "You think killing me ends this? I built a hundred Vipers. They will never stop hunting her."

"Let them hunt," I growled, my voice a dark, absolute promise. "I'll bury every single one of them next to you."

I grabbed Arthur by the throat, lifted him completely off his feet, and threw him backward. 

He didn't even have time to scream. 

Arthur crashed backward through the shattered balcony doors, plummeting fifty feet down into the burning, inferno wreckage of the vehicle bay below. 

I stood at the edge of the broken floor, my chest heaving, watching the flames consume the architect of my wife's suffering. 

"Cassian!" 

I spun around. 

Elara was climbing out of the cracked bunker, clutching her bleeding shoulder. Her face was pale, but her eyes were entirely alive. Behind her, Lily emerged, holding Leo securely against her chest. 

They were alive. They were safe. 

I rushed toward them, wrapping my arms around my wife, burying my face in her soot-covered hair. I held her so tightly I could feel the rapid, frantic beating of her heart against my chest. 

"I've got you," I whispered, pressing a kiss to her temple. "He's dead. It's over."

Elara pulled back slightly, looking up at me. A slow, exhausted, incredibly beautiful smile touched her lips. 

"You blew up our house," she pointed out, her voice trembling with relief. 

"I'll buy you a better one," I promised, kissing her deeply amidst the smoke and ruin. "I'll buy you the whole damn world, Elara Rossi."