Chapter 11 - Ashes in the Night: A Desperate Final Strike
Three days before the federal trial was scheduled to begin, the unthinkable happened.
During a routine inmate transport from the federal detention center to the courthouse, an armed rogue faction that had once been on Arthur Vance’s payroll ambushed the prison van, freeing Camille Vance in a desperate, bloody breakout.
The city went on immediate high alert. The FBI issued a nationwide manhunt, but I knew Camille’s twisted, narcissistic psychology better than anyone.
She wouldn't run to the Canadian border. She wouldn't try to flee to South America.
Her broken ego could not accept defeat until she took revenge on the woman she believed had stolen her life.
I immediately ordered the total lockdown of the Moretti estate in Beacon Hill. Marco placed thirty armed snipers along the perimeter walls, while motion sensors and infrared cameras monitored every square inch of the grounds.
At two in the morning, a heavy autumn fog rolled in from Boston Harbor, swallowing the estate in a thick, ghostly mist.
Inside the master suite, Elena was asleep in the guest quarters down the hall, guarded by two elite operatives. I sat in my armchair in the darkened library, a loaded custom Sig Sauer resting on the side table, watching the security feeds.
Suddenly, the infrared monitor flickered.
A shadow moved through the underground wine cellar ventilation tunnels—an old smuggler’s route from the nineteenth century that was not mapped on modern blueprints.
“Marco,” I whispered into my tactical earpiece. “Cellar entrance. Sub-level two. She’s inside.”
I picked up the firearm and moved silently down the spiral iron staircase into the darkened stone corridors beneath the estate.
The air in the cellar smelled of damp stone and sulfur.
Suddenly, a figure emerged from the shadows near the electrical breaker room, holding a glass bottle filled with gasoline and a road flare.
It was Camille. Her designer clothes were torn and covered in sewage mud, her eyes wide and wild with psychotic mania.
“Gabriel,” she hissed, her voice a cracked, demonic whisper. “You ruined me. You gave my ring, my mansion, and my life to a filthy maid!”
She struck the flare against the stone wall. A blinding red flame hissed to life, reflecting in her unhinged eyes.
“If I can’t have this empire, I will burn it to the ground with both of you inside!” she screamed, raising the gasoline bottle to ignite it.
Before the flare could touch the cloth fuse, I stepped out of the darkness and fired a single, precise shot.
The bullet shattered the road flare into a shower of harmless sparks, knocking it from her hand.
In the next second, Marco emerged from the shadows behind her, sweeping her legs out from under her and pinning her face-first against the cold stone floor.
The gasoline bottle rolled away, unbroken.
Camille shrieked like a wounded animal, thrashing wildly. “Let me go! Kill her, Gabriel! Kill the maid! She took everything from me!”
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I walked over, looking down at the broken, deranged woman who had once thought she could rule my world.
“Elena didn't take anything from you, Camille,” I said, my voice cold as absolute zero. “You destroyed yourself the moment you mistook cruelty for power.”
