Chapter 4 - THE FORTRESS ON THE HILL
Thirty minutes later, we were in the back of Julian’s armored Mercedes SUV, speeding through the heavy rain toward upstate New York.
Emma sat sandwiched between Oliver and me, holding a warm velvet blanket that one of Julian’s guards had brought from the trunk. Oliver had fallen asleep within five minutes, his head resting comfortably on Emma’s shoulder. Emma was wide awake, staring out the tinted windows at the passing city lights, fascinated by the silent convoy of black vehicles surrounding us.
Julian sat in the front passenger seat. He had spent the entire drive on two secure satellite phones, issuing calm, ruthless orders to his captains.
“Lock down the docks,” Julian instructed his lieutenant, Marcus, who was driving. “If a single Moretti soldier steps across the county line, neutralize them. I want full surveillance on Hawthorne Lane by sunrise. Buy the house next door. Put four men in it.”
“Yes, Boss,” Marcus replied, glancing nervously in the rearview mirror at Emma and me.
I gripped my purse tightly in my lap. Everything I had built over six years—my quiet nursing routines, my small apartment, my modest routines—had been completely dismantled in a single evening.
At 1:30 AM, the convoy turned off the highway and passed through massive iron gates guarded by armed men with attack dogs.
The estate rose out of the mist like a stone castle—a sprawling manor nestled high in the Hudson Valley, surrounded by eighty acres of private forest, reinforced steel fencing, and thermal camera towers. It was the Vance compound. The very place I had fled six years ago.
The SUV pulled under the stone portico. Julian opened the door and offered his hand to help me out.
I ignored his hand and stepped down on my own, holding Emma tight against my side.
Inside, the grand hall was warm and quiet. The marble floors gleamed, and a massive fireplace crackled at the end of the room. Staff members in dark uniforms bowed respectfully as Julian walked in, but their eyes widened when they saw me—and the little girl walking beside me.
“Take Oliver to his room,” Julian ordered a middle-aged nanny who hurried down the stairs.
“I want to stay with Emma,” Oliver protested sleepily, clinging to Emma’s jumper.
Julian looked down at his son, his expression softening instantly. “Emma and her mother are staying in the west wing, son. You’ll see them at breakfast.”
Once the children were led upstairs by the staff—under the watchful eye of two extra guards—the grand hall fell into an intense, heavy quiet.
Julian turned to face me. He took off his heavy wool coat and tossed it onto a leather chair.
“You live here now,” he said simply.
May you like
“I have a job, Julian,” I said, my voice rising. “I have patients at Elmhurst. I have a lease!”
“I’ll pay out your lease,” Julian said, walking toward the private bar and pouring two fingers of dark scotch into a crystal glass. “I’ll buy the hospital if that’s what it takes to keep your license active. But you and my daughter will not live in an unprotected frame house in Queens while a mob war is brewing.”
