Chapter 11 - The Russian Whisper
Vincent stood frozen in the center of the sunlit garden, staring at the crushed silver components in his palm.
The mechanical voice that had just spoken in Russian echoed in his mind like a death knell.
He looked over at Camille, who was smiling and brushing dirt from Adeline’s dress, completely unaware of the nightmare that had just landed in their sanctuary.
Vincent quietly slipped the broken microphone into his pocket and forced a warm smile for his wife and daughter.
He walked over, kissed Camille gently on the forehead, and suggested they take the rest of the afternoon inside behind the reinforced steel doors.
Once his family was safely settled in the master suite, Vincent descended into the mansion’s newly constructed underground command center.
His new head of security, a ruthless but fiercely loyal ex-Marine named Elias, was already monitoring the camera feeds.
Vincent dropped the crushed device onto the steel table and ordered Elias to sweep every inch of the estate for more bugs.
He knew exactly what that microphone meant: the peace they had enjoyed for the past year was nothing but a carefully orchestrated illusion.
The Salvatore family may have been wiped out, but power vacuums in the underworld never lasted for very long.
A shadow organization had been watching them, studying their movements, and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Elias ran a diagnostic on the destroyed bug and confirmed Vincent’s worst fears.
It was military-grade Bratva technology, completely untraceable and expensive enough to fund a small war.
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Vincent leaned heavily against the console, his old gunshot wounds aching with a phantom pain.
The Russian mafia had come to Chicago, and they were looking right at his little girl.
