Kidnapping the Assassin: The Mafia Don’s Fatal Mistake

The Shattered Glass

Chapter 71

[Elara]

I closed my eyes, letting the warmth of Cassian’s mouth banish the ghosts of the past. The Tuscan sunset wrapped around us, heavy and golden. For the first time in my existence, my muscles weren't coiled in preparation for an attack. I was completely, terrifyingly unguarded.

That was my first mistake.

The sound didn't register as a gunshot. It sounded like the sharp, violent crack of a massive tree branch snapping in half.

The crystal wine glass resting on the stone balustrade six inches from my hip spontaneously exploded.

A shower of razor-sharp shards and deep red wine erupted outward. The liquid splattered across the pristine white linen of my sundress, looking horribly, sickeningly like fresh blood.

My civilian complacency vanished in a microsecond. The Viper violently seized control of my nervous system.

"Sniper!" I screamed, grabbing the lapels of Cassian’s suit and throwing all of my body weight backward.

I dragged my husband to the terracotta tiles just as a second supersonic round tore through the exact physical space his chest had occupied a fraction of a heartbeat earlier. The heavy-caliber bullet struck the stone wall of the villa behind us, carving a fist-sized crater into the masonry.

"Lily! Get down!" Cassian roared over the echoing crack of the rifle.

Down on the lawn, Lily didn't hesitate. Her trauma-ward instincts flared. She grabbed five-year-old Sofia by the waist, tackling the little girl into the thick, protective cover of the manicured hedge maze.

Cassian and I lay flat on the terrace floor, our chests heaving, pressed tightly against the stone balustrade for cover.

"Distance?" Cassian demanded, his obsidian eyes wild with the sudden, apocalyptic return to violence. He reached instinctively for a sidearm that wasn't there. We were at home. We were supposed to be safe.

"Two seconds between the glass shattering and the sound of the report," I calculated rapidly, my heart slamming a frantic, toxic rhythm against my ribs. "He’s over a mile away. Perched on the eastern ridge."

A mile away.

That wasn't a cartel thug looking to make a name for himself. That was a military-grade, hyper-lethal professional.

Before Cassian could shout an order to the perimeter guards, the heavy glass doors of the terrace slid open.

Leo dropped onto his stomach, sliding across the terracotta tiles to join us behind the stone wall. He didn't look like an eighteen-year-old boy. He looked entirely like the Heir. In his hands, he held a sleek, suppressed compact submachine gun, which he immediately shoved into Cassian’s hands.

"Papa, take it," Leo ordered, his dark eyes burning with absolute, terrifying focus.

"Where are the perimeter guards?" Cassian growled, checking the chamber of the weapon with practiced, lethal efficiency. "Why didn't the thermal alarms trigger?"

"They didn't trigger because the shooter isn't on the ground," Leo stated grimly. He pulled a slim, black encrypted tablet from his jacket. The screen displayed a live feed of the airspace above the estate. "I just tapped into the regional air traffic control. Mamma, he isn't on the ridge. He’s in the sky."

I looked at the screen. A tiny, unauthorized blip was circling the airspace two miles above our villa.

"A high-altitude stealth drone," I realized, the blood draining completely from my face. "They mounted a sniper rifle to an unmanned aerial vehicle. The drone's exhaust is thermally baffled. The estate's sensors were looking for body heat in the trees, not metal in the clouds."

"Who has the technology to weaponize a stealth drone in Italian airspace without the military noticing?" Cassian demanded, his jaw locked in a furious, white-knuckled clench.

Leo tapped the screen, decoding the drone's telemetry signal.

"It's not European," Leo whispered, his voice dropping into a register of profound, chilling dread. "The encryption architecture... Mamma, it's originating from a satellite uplink in North America."

The High Table was dead. The European cartels were crushed.

But as I stared at the blinking red dot on my son's tablet, a terrifying, suffocating realization settled over my soul. We had spent fifteen years conquering the continent, believing we had claimed the entire underworld.

We hadn't claimed the world. We had just drawn the attention of the monsters ruling the other half of it.

"Get your sister into the bunker," Cassian ordered Leo, his voice a low, vibrating promise of absolute carnage. "Tell Nine to deploy the shadows. I want that drone shot out of my sky."

As Leo scrambled back inside, I looked up at Cassian. The peaceful, distinguished King of Rome was gone. The brutal, unforgiving apex predator had returned to the throne.

"We are going to America," Cassian vowed, his dark eyes locking onto mine.