Chapter 4 - The Dead Wife's Map
I lowered my weapon slightly, my mind struggling to process her impossible words.
I asked her how she could possibly know my dead wife.
Grace told me that she was not a housekeeper at all.
She confessed that she was a private investigator hired by Isabelle two years ago.
Isabelle had suspected that my criminal empire was being quietly taken over from the inside.
She had hired Grace to follow Dante and uncover his financial betrayals.
Grace explained that Isabelle had gathered enough evidence to destroy half the crime families in New York.
That was the real reason she was gunned down outside the preschool.
I felt a sickening wave of guilt and failure wash over me.
My wife had been fighting a silent war in the shadows while I was blind to the traitors in my own house.
I looked at my three beautiful daughters, realizing they had witnessed the brutal assassination of their mother.
That was why they had completely stopped speaking.
They were paralyzed by the horrific trauma of seeing Dante pull the trigger.
Suddenly, a massive explosion shook the foundation of the entire mansion.
Dust and debris rained down from the concrete ceiling of the panic room.
Dante and his men were using C4 plastic explosives to blast their way through the basement floors.
Grace grabbed her backpack and told me we had less than three minutes before the ceiling collapsed.
She pointed to a heavy iron grate bolted to the floor in the corner of the room.
She explained that Isabelle had paid a contractor to secretly dig an escape tunnel leading to the city sewers.
I was completely stunned that my wife had planned this extensive survival route without my knowledge.
We grabbed the heavy grate and hoisted it up, revealing a dark, narrow concrete shaft.
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I told Grace to take the girls down first while I held off the attackers.
Just as Nora climbed down into the darkness, the steel door of the panic room began to melt from a thermite charge.
