Before I could answer, my private security intercom flashed red on the desk console. Daniel’s voice came through the encrypted speaker, low and urgent.
“Boss, we have a serious problem—two black town cars just rolled through the main iron gates unannounced, and Richard Bellini is walking up the front marble steps with four of his personal hitters right now.”
Olivia stood up so fast her chair tipped back against the bookshelves. “He knows,” she breathed, her face paper-white as she looked toward the hallway. “Mr. Moretti, if he sees me or Lily—he remembers my mother’s face from Cedar Lane. I look just like her.”
“He isn’t going to see either of you,” I said, moving with the cold, mechanical precision that had kept me alive through three syndicate wars. In three strides I swept the five letters, the joined photograph, and the brass K key into my inner suit pocket, opened the study door, and scooped three-year-old Lily and her velveteen rabbit up into my left arm.
Lily blinked in surprise at the sudden lift, her small fingers automatically catching the lapel of my cashmere jacket. “Are we playing hide-and-seek, Mister Gabriel?”
“The championship round, sweetheart,” I murmured against her curls, twisting the bronze bust of Marcus Aurelius on my bookshelf thirty degrees counterclockwise. A four-inch-thick slab of mahogany paneling slid silently inward, revealing the climate-controlled titanium panic room built into the chimney breast. It had its own independent oxygen scrubber, satellite phone line, and internal deadbolt that couldn’t be breached without demolition charges.
I guided Olivia inside and set Lily down onto the cushioned bench. Before I could step back over the threshold, Lily tugged on my cuff and held up a fresh, slightly crumpled tissue from the pocket of her yellow dress.
“Here,” she whispered earnestly, pressing the soft paper into my palm. “Don’t let the mean people make your mommy’s picture cry again, okay?”
My chest tightened so fiercely it hurt to swallow. I closed my fingers around the tiny tissue, rested my other hand briefly against the side of Olivia’s trembling cheek to steady her, and met her eyes. “The panel only opens from the inside once I engage the lock, or with my thumbprint. Do not open it for any voice other than mine. Not even Daniel’s.”
Olivia nodded, pulling Lily into her lap as the heavy steel-lined door glided shut and sealed without a whisper.
Thirty seconds later, I was seated behind my desk with a quarterly shipping manifest open in front of me when the double doors of my study swung wide. Richard Bellini stepped into the room, wearing a charcoal overcoat draped over his shoulders, his silver hair immaculately combed, and four thick-necked men lingering in the corridor behind him until Daniel stepped across the threshold and blocked their path.