Chapter 5 - The Sniper in the Dark
Julian reacted with lightning speed and violently tackled me to the marble floor.
He screamed for Chloe to drop to the ground and crawl quickly toward the hallway.
A silenced sniper bullet shattered the expensive vase that had been sitting right behind Julian's head.
Broken glass rained down on us as we desperately scrambled away from the window's line of sight.
I grabbed Chloe and pulled her into the hidden windowless panic room located in the master bedroom.
Julian slammed the heavy steel door shut and locked the reinforced deadbolt just in time.
My heart was hammering against my ribs as I tried to calm my hysterically sobbing daughter.
I grabbed the teddy bear from her hands and violently ripped the fabric seams apart.
A small, blinking black tracking device fell out of the stuffing and onto the cold floor.
Zachary had turned my innocent daughter's favorite comfort object into a deadly homing beacon.
Julian crushed the glowing tracker beneath the heavy heel of his expensive leather shoe.
He pulled out an encrypted satellite phone and frantically called his elite security contractor.
He demanded a full tactical sweep of the surrounding city rooftops to find the hidden sniper.
I sat on the floor and realized that Zachary was not just a toxic and abusive husband.
He was a ruthless criminal monster who would gladly kill anyone who stood in his way.
Hours passed in suffocating, terrifying silence inside the cold panic room.
Finally, Julian's phone buzzed with an urgent text update from his security team.
They had successfully apprehended the sniper on a nearby roof and forcefully interrogated him.
The sniper confessed that he was not actually hired by Zachary or Vanessa at all.
I stared at Julian in absolute confusion, trying to process this seemingly impossible information.
Julian read the rest of the text message and his composed face turned completely pale.
He looked at me and said the deadly sniper was hired by Zachary's teenage son, Tristan.
I gasped in shock and asked how a thirteen-year-old boy could possibly hire a professional assassin.
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Julian showed me the intercepted bank transfer receipt on his glowing phone screen.
Tristan had access to Vanessa's hidden offshore accounts and had spent fifty thousand dollars to eliminate me.
