Chapter 4: The Final Trap
By dawn, the attack was repelled, but the estate was a war zone. Griffin's men had slaughtered the intruders, but the message was clear: Carlo Marino would not stop until Griffin was dead.
Griffin’s shoulder was professionally stitched by an underground doctor, and by noon, he was dressed in a fresh black suit, looking every inch the untouchable kingpin once more. But there was a cold fury radiating from him that chilled the air.
"I am ending this today," Griffin told me in his study, loading a fresh magazine into his pistol. "I'm taking my best men and hitting Carlo's compound. You stay here in the safe room."
"It's a trap," I said instinctively.
Griffin paused, looking up at me. "What makes you say that?"
"Carlo Marino lost his daughter, his underboss, and dozens of men last night," I explained, pacing the floor. "He knows he can't beat you in a frontal assault. If he is at his compound waiting for you, it’s because he wants you to come. He’s luring you in."
Griffin stared at me, evaluating my logic. "He’s desperate."
"Desperate men set traps," I insisted. "Griffin, please. Don't walk into it."
He walked over to me, kissing my forehead gently. "I have to finish this, Claire. Trust me."
He left, taking a convoy of black SUVs. I was locked in the safe room, watching the monitors, feeling a suffocating dread. My mind raced. I couldn't just sit here. I started reviewing the security footage from the night before, specifically looking at the perimeter breach. How had Marino's men bypassed the secondary gate?
I rewound the footage. I zoomed in. And then my blood ran cold.
A guard on the inside—one of Griffin's most trusted lieutenants, a man named Marcus—had manually entered the override code for the gate seconds before the Marino vehicles crashed through. Marcus was a mole. And Marcus had just left in the same convoy as Griffin.
He was leading Griffin straight into the slaughter.
I grabbed the satellite phone Griffin had left with me and dialed his secure line.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
"Claire, I can't talk right now," Griffin's voice came through, tense and tight. "We are two minutes out from Marino's gates."
"Griffin, listen to me!" I shouted into the receiver. "Marcus is a traitor! I watched the footage from last night. He opened the secondary gates for Marino's men. He’s leading you into an ambush!"
Silence stretched on the line for three agonizing seconds.
"Griffin?"
"Stay in the safe room, Claire," Griffin’s voice returned, dropping to a terrifying, deadly calm. "I will be home for dinner."
The line clicked dead.
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I paced the safe room for what felt like hours. Later, I would find out exactly what happened. Griffin had subtly alerted his loyal men in the convoy. When they reached Marino's gates, instead of driving in, Griffin turned his gun on Marcus, executing the traitor in the passenger seat. Then, using Marcus’s radio, Griffin signaled a false all-clear to Marino’s men waiting with explosives inside the compound, causing them to prematurely detonate their own trap, wiping out Marino and his top lieutenants in a fiery inferno.
But in the safe room, I knew none of this. I only knew that I was irrevocably, deeply in love with the most dangerous man in Chicago, and I might have just lost him.
