Chapter 14 - Poison in the Nursery
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Panic didn't freeze Tessa’s limbs this time—a blinding, ferocious maternal rage surged straight through her veins like liquid fire.
Downstairs, the string quartet was playing Vivaldi loudly over the chatter of two hundred guests, drowning out any cry for help she might make from the isolated second-floor wing. If she ran back down the stairs to get Dante, the fake nurse would already be down the service elevator and into the escape tunnel at the back of the pantry with her son.
Tessa kicked off her cream silk heels on the carpet so her footsteps wouldn't make a sound.
Moving silently to the open door of Dante’s master bedroom, which connected directly to the nursery from the left side, she slipped inside and ran straight to the biometric nightstand drawer beside the bed.
Four nights ago, right after Corrado and Sofia had threatened them on the terrace, Dante had registered Tessa’s right thumbprint into the safe lock and spent an hour on the estate’s underground firing range teaching her how to release the safety and brace the recoil of a compact nine-millimeter Glock 43.
"Never point it unless you are willing to take a life to save Leo’s," Dante had whispered against her ear at the range.
Tessa pressed her thumb to the sensor. The steel drawer slid open without a sound.
She wrapped both hands around the cold polymer grip of the Glock, chambers-checked the brass round just as Dante had shown her, and crept to the connecting oak door leading into the nursery.
Inside the sunny room, the woman posing as Nurse Elena had already zipped a sleeping, lightly sedated Leo into a ventilated canvas medical carrier strapped across her chest. In her right hand, she held a uncapped medical syringe filled with clear potassium chloride—preparing to leave it beside the crib or inject anyone who got in her way.
As the assassin turned toward the rear service door that led to the servants' stairwell, Tessa kicked the connecting bedroom door wide open and stepped into the center of the nursery with the Glock leveled squarely at the woman’s chest.
"Take your hands off that strap and put my son back in the crib," Tessa said, her voice deadly steady. "Or I swear to God I will paint that woodland mural with the back of your skull."
The fake nurse froze in her tracks, her eyes widening in shock at the sight of the schoolteacher holding a loaded nine-millimeter with zero hesitation in her hazel eyes.
"You won't shoot while I’m wearing the baby on my chest, sweetheart," the woman sneered, slowly shifting her weight onto the balls of her feet as she raised the lethal potassium syringe like a dagger. "Drop the gun, or when I fall, I fall right on top of him."
"Then I won't shoot your chest," Tessa replied coldly.
The assassin lunged forward across the six feet of carpet, swinging the needle straight toward Tessa’s carotid artery.
Tessa didn't flinch and she didn't close her eyes. She dropped her aim twelve inches and pulled the trigger once.
CRACK!
The gunshot echoed like a cannon blast through the quiet upstairs wing. The hollow-point bullet shattered the assassin’s right kneecap in a spray of crimson, dropping the woman sideways onto her left hip with an ear-splitting scream as the potassium syringe flew harmlessly across the floorboards.
Before the woman could grab the backup pistol strapped to her ankle, Tessa rushed forward, kicked the woman’s weapon under the dresser, and unclipped the medical carrier from the screaming assassin’s shoulders, lifting a crying, startled Leo safely into her arms just as the hallway doors burst inward off their hinges.
Dante stormed into the room with his silver Beretta drawn, trailed by Nico and six guards who had heard the shot from the ballroom below.
For half a second, Dante took in the scene—the blood-spattered carpet, the professional female hitwoman writhing on the floor clutching her shattered knee, the lethal syringe lying near the crib, and Tessa standing in her cream silk dress with a smoking Glock in one hand and their wailing son held fiercely against her shoulder with the other.
Dante holstered his weapon instantly and crossed the room in two strides, wrapping both arms around Tessa and Leo, crushing them against his racing heart.
"Are you hurt?! Did she touch either of you?!" Dante rasped frantically, his hands trembling as he checked Tessa’s neck and arms before looking down into Leo’s crying, healthy pink face.
"We're fine," Tessa breathed against his chest, her adrenaline finally giving way to shivers as she dropped the hot pistol onto the changing table. "She tranqed the guards in the closet and tried to take him out through the service stairs."
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Dante’s eyes turned from terrified relief to pure, apocalyptic darkness as he looked down over Tessa’s shoulder at the woman bleeding on his son’s nursery rug.
"Nico," Dante said, his voice quieter than a tomb. "Clear every guest out of this estate in five minutes. Except for my Uncle Corrado and Sofia Rossi. Lock them in the dining room—and drag this bitch down to the boathouse cellar."
