Chapter 5 - THE TRAP IS SPRUNG
The tension in the parlor was so thick it was suffocating. Lorenzo slowly raised his hands again, backing up a step, though his eyes remained dark with hidden malice.
"Get out of my house," Dominic ordered smoothly. "If I find a single one of your men within five miles of my gates by sunset, the treaty is officially dead."
Lorenzo sneered, turning on his heel and walking out of the mansion with his guards trailing behind him.
The moment the heavy doors slammed shut, Dominic turned around. He swept Lily up into his arms, checking her over as if checking for invisible injuries, before handing her back to me.
"Clara, take the kids upstairs," Dominic said softly to me, though his eyes were fixed on Frankie.
"What's happening, Mr. Moretti?" I asked, my voice trembling slightly.
"Lorenzo came here to confirm two things," Dominic revealed, his jaw clenched tight. "First, whether Lily could truly identify his operative. Second, to see if I would let my guard down."
"Did he frame himself?" Frankie asked, confused.
"No," Dominic said, walking over to his desk and pulling up a hidden security monitor. "Lorenzo did order the hit. But he didn't expect a three-year-old to spot his man. Now he knows Lily is the only witness who can link his main lieutenant directly to an attempted murder charge."
My heart hammered wildly against my ribs. "They're going to target Lily."
Dominic looked at me, his grey eyes dead serious, filled with an iron strength that anchored my panic. "Over my dead body, Clara. We're springing a trap tonight."
That evening, Dominic executed a brilliant tactical operation.
He publicly announced through hit-and-run underworld channels that Lily and I were being relocated under federal witness protection to an estate in Connecticut at midnight. A convoy of three black armored SUVs was prepared in the front driveway under heavy guard.
It was bait.
While the loud convoy drew attention at the front gate, Dominic led me, Lily, and Ethan down into the estate's historical underground wine cellars—a subterranean bunker built during Prohibition with two-foot-thick reinforced concrete walls and an independent communications hub.
At 12:45 AM, the subterranean security monitors flickered.
A squad of five armed mercenaries, led personally by Lorenzo’s chief lieutenant—the man with the reflective work boots—breached the perimeter wall near the east conservatory, believing the mansion had been cleared of its main security force.
They walked straight into an ambush.
Dominic’s elite inner guard, led by Frankie, closed the trap from behind. Within ten minutes, without a single shot fired that reached the ears of the children below, all five intruders were neutralized and secured in federal custody.
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The chief lieutenant, facing life imprisonment for attempted murder of a minor and domestic terrorism, broke within twenty minutes of questioning. He surrendered full digital audio recordings of Lorenzo Valenti ordering the poison attack on Ethan.
By sunrise, federal marshals and state police had raided the Valenti compound in New Jersey, arresting Lorenzo and dismantling his entire syndicate for good.
