Chapter 3 - The Secret Floorboard
The battle inside the main mansion raged for twenty minutes.
Salvatore Vance and his eight remaining enforcers fought with lethal, military precision, driving the Moretti strike team back toward the courtyard. But the Morettis had numerical superiority, and two more vehicles had just entered the lower driveway.
Inside the library, heavy smoke drifted through the broken stained-glass windows.
Salvatore stood behind a heavy oak desk, reloading his sidearm, his chest heaving. Blood trickled from a shallow scratch on his forehead.
Suddenly, the hidden vault door clicked open with a soft hydraulic hiss.
Salvatore spun around, aiming his weapon at the opening. "Renley! I told you to stay—"
Renley stepped out, carrying her red bicycle with surprisingly practiced ease. She didn't look terrified; she looked focused.
She held out her right hand. Resting in her palm was the small, tarnished bronze key.
"Mr. Pike gave me this two weeks ago," Renley said clearly, her voice cutting through the smell of gunpowder and burning drapery. "He told me to give it to the man who asked for his soup."
Salvatore froze, his weapon slowly lowering. He stared at the bronze key in absolute, stunned silence.
"The key..." Salvatore breathed out, his eyes wide. "The key to the old floor safe beneath the St. Jude Community Kitchen..."
"He told me that if anything happened to him, the evidence that clears your family's name and proves the Morettis ordered the 1985 docks bombing was inside that safe," Renley explained. "He said you were too stubborn to come looking for him, so he left the trail with the only person who came to his door every week."
Salvatore fell to his knees in front of her, taking the small bronze key into his large, rough hand. Tears mixed with the soot on his face.
"He never stopped trying to save me," Salvatore sobbed silently, pressing the key to his forehead. "Even while living on community soup... he was building my freedom."
"We have to go to the kitchen, Mr. Vance," Renley said, pointing toward the rear terrace window. "The Moretti men are blocking the front driveway, but there is an old logging path behind your estate that leads directly to the South End. I know that path—I ride my bike along it every autumn to collect wild apples for the kitchen."
Salvatore looked at the twelve-year-old girl in front of him. She wasn't just a delivery girl. She was his brother's guardian angel, and now she was his only way out of a death trap.
"Dominic!" Salvatore roared, standing up with renewed, terrifying energy. "Provide covering fire at the main gate! We are taking the rear logging trail!"
Five minutes later, a heavy custom armored pickup truck crashed through the rear wooden fencing of the estate, plunging into the dark, narrow logging trail under the cover of the dense mountain fog.
Sitting in the front passenger seat was Salvatore Vance, holding a high-powered tactical rifle.
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In the back seat, sitting securely between two heavily armed bodyguards, was twelve-year-old Renley Hart, her red bicycle strapped tightly into the truck's bed, her thermal food bag resting on her lap.
"Hold on, little girl," Salvatore said, his eyes burning like white-hot coals as he looked into the rearview mirror at the pursuing headlights of the Moretti vehicles behind them. "Tonight, we take back the city."
