Page 49 of Assassin Daddy

FAUSTINO:House under attack. We’re safe but outnumbered. Defenses could be breached at any moment. Going to put the boys in the panic room and retreat to high ground on third floor. Wherever you are, brother… hurry the hell home.

And as the traffic light finally changed from red to green, Matteo floored the accelerator and began what would be the most important car journey of his life. Time was running out, and Matteo knew it. Faustino and Michael were expert marksmen and loyal warriors – but if they were truly outnumbered by Alphonso’s best men, then there was only so long that they could hold out for.

The boys might have been safe in the panic room for now. But if Alphonso had even an inkling that they were in there, it would only be a matter of time before he got his murderous hands on them.

Matteo loved Kyan more than life itself – and as he drove back toward the city, he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to prove it too…

Matteo pulled up just around the corner from his townhouse. And within seconds of getting out of his car, Matteo heard the sound of a door been broken down.

‘They’re in,’ Steele said, jumping down from his truck, his heavy combat boots hitting the wet sidewalk. ‘They could be hitting up the house to make a statement. Or they could know that Faustino and Michael are there and are taking them out.’

‘They could know that Kyan is there too,’ Matteo said, his mind taking him to a very bad place indeed. ‘We need some kind of angle. And we need to think of it fast.’

With that, Matteo and Steele approached the house as stealthily as they could. With the front door having been battered open, there was the obvious route of simply walking in and hoping to catch the attackers unaware. This was a big play – and a risky one too. Alphonso wasn’t stupid, and neither were his best men. There would surely be a man guarding the entrance.

‘Any ideas?’ Steele asked. ‘I’m thinking potentially we could scale the house from the rear. Maybe break in through an upper floor window.’

‘We could… if my own security efforts hadn’t made that virtually impossible,’ Matteo answered.

But if Matteo was getting frustrated at his own good security, then he was about to be given an unexpected boost from a most unlikely source…

‘Mr. Fendi,’ came the voice from the nearest ground floor window. ‘Pssst. Here!’

‘Mrs. Goldstein,’ Matteo answered, crouching next to his neighbor’s house with a pistol in his hand and a conspicuously armed Steele only a pace behind him. ‘I…’

‘Oh, Matteo, drop the act, I wasn’t born yesterday,’ Mrs. Goldstein replied. ‘My family has been in this city long enough to know how things work. And I know a good man when I meet one too. Inside, and make it quick. I might just have the answer you’re looking for…’

Matteo exchanged a look with Steele.

This was an opportunity directly from leftfield and given how the odds were stacked against them, Matteo and Steele were in no position to turn it down either…

‘Now you may or may not know that our houses used to be one residence,’ Mrs. Goldstein said, walking up her staircase with Matteo and Steele behind her. ‘I only sold the other half to free up some funds. What we have here is the old staff door.’

Mrs. Goldstein stood at the bottom of a small staircase and smiled knowingly.

‘This leads up to your loft?’ Matteo asked.

‘It does. But it also has a door that will open directly into your guest bathroom,’ Mrs. Goldstein replied. ‘All you’ll need to do is squeeze past some dusty old pipes and maybe even break through a couple of old wooden slats.’

‘You never thought to tell me this before?’ Matteo asked, perplexed but ultimately happy to have this unexpected avenue of attack. ‘It doesn’t matter. Thank you.’

‘Yup. We owe you one,’ Steele added, respectfully bowing his head.

‘You do,’ Mrs. Goldstein replied. ‘I accept cash, cakes, and flowers. In that order.’

Matteo smiled before heading up the stairs and walking down the narrow corridor and toward the barely visible heating pipes.

‘Looks like Mrs. Goldstein wasn’t lying,’ Steele said, standing next to Matteo as the pair of them quickly but carefully pushed the wooden slats out and made their way into the guest bathroom.

Matteo listened as he heard shots being fired.

‘Faustino and Michael are on the floor above us,’ Matteo said. ‘My guess is that Alphonso’s men are…’

There was no time to waste. Matteo and Steele burst out of the bathroom and used the brief element of surprise to open fire on Alphonso’s men from behind as they shot up toward Faustino and Michael.

‘Push down,’ Matteo hollered, his voice just about audible over the gunfire. ‘Michael. Faustino. Push down. We’ve got them in a pincer.’

And as Matteo and Steele worked with Faustino and Michael to take down Alphonso’s men, Matteo was shocked to see Alphonso’s most senior right hand man lying in a pool of his own blood…

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