The heavy tires of the car screamed against the concrete pavement as Griffin violently spun the steering wheel, drifting the massive vehicle through the shattered, un-guarded iron gates of the estate.
The vehicle had barely come to a complete halt in the grand courtyard before the rear door flew open with a resounding bang, and Alfonso stepped out into the bright morning air, his face transformed into a mask of unbridled destruction.
The estate grounds were swallowed by a suffocating silence that felt entirely unnatural.
There were no active gunfights neither shouts of retreating enemies.
Instead, the aftermath of a highly calculated storm lay laid bare before them.
The grand entryway had been completely blown open, the double doors hanging limply from their mangled hinges.
Alfonso’s eyes swept across the courtyard and the main foyer, taking in the sight of his soldiers scattered across the blood-splattered floor.
Dozens of his best men were lying on the ground, wounded, groaning in agonizing pain, and entirely grounded.
Alfonso strode past them, his shoes clicking sharply against the bloodied tiles, his gaze analyzing the carnage with the precision of a seasoned warlord.
As he looked closer at the fallen guards, a dangerous realization settled in his mind.
Every single one of his men had been shot in critical places~shattered kneecaps, pierced shoulders, and deep flesh wounds that caused massive blood loss~but none of the shots had been aimed at the heart or the head.
It had been done with a freakish, terrifyingly deliberate discipline.
No one had been killed.
The attackers hadn’t come to eliminate the Excross Gang; they had come with a entirely different, focused objective.
The entire interior of the palace had been turned completely upside down.
Expensive oil paintings were ripped from the walls, marble statues were shattered into a thousand pieces, and cabinets were violently overturned, their contents spilled carelessly across the floorboards.
It looked like a frantic, desperate horde of intruders had been searching everywhere, tearing the infrastructure apart to locate something hidden within the walls.
“They didn’t come to take our territory. They were hunting.”
Alfonso didn’t waste a single breath responding.
He bypassed the main staircase and headed straight for the rear service corridors, his frame moving with a terrifying speed.
He navigated the labyrinth of ruined hallways until he reached the concealed steel door that led into the deepest levels of the hidden basement structure.
He slammed his palm against the biometric scanner, which was sparking from a nearby bullet impact, and used his brute strength to violently heave the heavy door open.
“Sophie! Get the hell out here!” Alfonso roared into the dark, damp subterranean stairwell, his voice echoing off the concrete walls.
A moment later, shuffling footsteps echoed from the darkness.
Griffin immediately bounded down the steps, his hands reaching out to assist a battered, disheveled Sophie as she emerged into the light.
Her elegant hair was matted with dust, and her clothes were stained with soot, but she held her firearm tightly.
Right behind her, trembling so violently that she could barely keep her footing on the concrete steps, was Joanne.
The voluptuous nurse was a complete mess of terror; her black nightgown was torn at the shoulder, her pale skin was caked in drywall dust, and a thin, bright red line of fresh blood trickled down her cheek from a small scratch near her temple.
Alfonso didn’t hesitate.
He stepped forward and fished the wounded, shaking Joanne out of the stairwell, his hands locking around her trembling shoulders with a bruising grip that instantly anchored her to his chest.
“Report, Sophie,” Alfonso commanded, his voice dropping into a rumble that filled the empty corridor.
“What the hell happened here? Who breached my perimeter?”
Sophie leaned heavily against Griffin’s shoulder, wiping a streak of sweat and dirt from her forehead as she caught her breath, her usual vibrant confidence entirely replaced by a tense, serious rattle.
“We were just chilling in the secondary lounge, Boss… everything was completely quiet after you left. Then, without a single second of warning, it felt like bullets started raining outside from every single direction. We tried to mobilize, but when we looked through the security feeds, a massive, highly coordinated group of masked men had already breached the outer wall. They just started firing ruthlessly at the house with suppressive fire. Since they caught our morning shift completely off guard, they managed to overpower the courtyard guards within five minutes.”
Alfonso’s jaw clenched so hard the muscles in his neck strained against his collar.
He glared down at the ruined hallway, his icy eyes dilating with a lethal fury.
“What were they after? Did they breach the vault? Did they take the ledger?”
“No, Boss… they didn’t touch the vault,” Sophie reported, her voice dropping into an ominous whisper.
“They were after Joanne. The entire time they were tearing the palace upside down, the lead bastards were shouting her name at the top of their lungs, demanding to know where the nurse was hidden as they searched every single room.”
Alfonso froze.
A suffocating silence fell over the corridor as his mind processed the information.
Slowly, deliberately, he turned his head down, his piercing, cold eyes locking onto the innocent, shaking face of the beautiful nurse pinned against his massive frame.
“Joanne,” Alfonso growled, his deep voice vibrating with a terrifying rage that made her spine turn to ice.
“Look at me.”
Joanne lifted her tear-stained face, her full lips quivering as she looked back at him with a gaze full of fright.
She frantically shook her head in absolute denial, her small hands clutching the lapels of his suit jacket as if clinging to a monster for protection against an even greater nightmare.
“I… I don’t know!” Joanne sobbed out loud, her voice cracking with a frantic, breathless panic.
“I swear to you, Mr. Fareno, I don’t know what was happening! I don’t know who those men are, and I have no idea why they would be calling my name or looking for me! I’ve never seen them in my life! Please, you have to believe me, I can’t… I can’t think…”
Her voice faded into a series of terrified, choked whimpers, her throat closing up from the intensity of the trauma, rendering her completely unable to speak another coherent word.
Alfonso’s patience evaporated into thin air.
His dark eyes flashed with a feral, merciless dominance.
Without a single ounce of gentleness, he clutched her by the waist and shook her trembling body, his fingers digging into her soft flesh that she let out a muffled cry of pain.
He dragged her face mere inches from his own, his hot breath fanning across her cheek as he delivered a cold, brutal ultimatum that left her soul entirely paralyzed with fear:
“You better open that beautiful mouth of yours and start speaking right now, sweet nurse, or I swear to God I will drag you by your hair and send you right out those front gates to let those bastards butcher you alive!”