Chapter 4: "Sorry For The Mess"
For the next one hour, the remaining nine Houses presented their arguments for dismantling House Lombardi piece by piece.
Territories. Assets. Contracts. Voting rights.
Aren stood quietly beside Gian Lombardi throughout the proceedings.
She made an effort to listen, only to find herself submerged in a sea of financial jargon.
Approximately twenty percent of the terms made coherent sense to her; the remaining eighty sounded like an encrypted battlefield transmission delivered in another language.
The atmosphere in the room was exceptionally tense.
Her "father" looked increasingly haggard as words like "heavy debt" and "liquidation" were hurled across the table like poisoned daggers.
Aren found herself feeling quietly sorry for him. On the bright side, she found the strawberry cupcake she’d kept for herself exceptionally good.
Across the table, Caio Sartori was not as engaged in the proceedings as he had intended to be.
He had entered the Summit fully prepared to negotiate, evaluate weaknesses, and position himself advantageously once House Lombardi inevitably collapsed.
Instead, against all reason, he found himself staring at Ariana Lombardi.
Or more specifically, to the way her cheeks moved as she chewed.
He watched as she ate with quiet manners, taking small bites, completely composed, as if she were attending an afternoon tea rather than the public execution of her own House.
’What the hell is wrong with her?’
Irritation burned at the back of his mind, yet there was something else — a flicker of unwelcome curiosity. It stirred quietly in his chest, like an itch he could not quite reach.
He shut it down immediately.
’Irrelevant.’
Aren, for her part, noticed none of his attention.
Her focus had long shifted elsewhere entirely. Her instinct, trained by years of battlefield survival, began to pick up sounds beneath the surface noise of the room.
First, there was the metallic ’clack’ of a firearm safety being switched off.
Then came the soft thud of coordinated footfalls from the service entrance.
Aren took another bite, pondering the situation. Earlier at the gate, she had been thoroughly checked for weapons. Now, she heard the distinct signature of submachine guns.
’Is The Hub actually a neutral ground at all?’ she wondered faintly.
Around her, the discussion continued, but something had shifted in the air.
A servant entered to refill the refreshments, but his hands were shaking so violently that the silver pitcher rattled against the glasses.
Aren noticed that as well.
Then—
Everything happened at once.
The room exploded into motion.
The main doors burst inward with a deafening crash while the service entrance flooded with armed figures simultaneously. At the eastern side of the chamber, reinforced glass shattered violently as additional attackers stormed through the windows.
There were twelve of them in total — all masked, armed, and moving with the lethal coordination of professional mercenaries rather than desperate criminals.
The guards of the Houses reacted instantly, but they were already at a disadvantage. The rules of the Hub had stripped them of all weapons, leaving them to fight with nothing but their bodies against opponents carrying automatic weapons.
The imbalance proved catastrophic.
Within less than thirty seconds, every guard in the room had been subdued.
"NOBODY MOVE!" one of the attackers shouted.
"You’re in the wrong room, boy!" the Lombardi security chief shouted back while reaching beneath his jacket for a concealed blade.
The lead attacker didn’t hesitate.
He raised his suppressed handgun and shot the man point-blank.
BANG!
The shot cracked through the chamber with horrifying sharpness.
Blood sprayed across a gold-leaf pillar as the man collapsed instantly, his body striking the marble floor with a sickening thud.
Silence fell, heavy and suffocating.
Behind the seated Dons, advisors and heirs finally began panicking openly.
"Do you have any idea what you’re doing?" someone shouted from the back of the room. "You’ll be hunted to the ends of the earth for this!"
"Shut your mouth!" a gunman barked immediately.
"Hands on the table! Fingers interlaced! Now!" another gunman roared.
The attackers moved efficiently between the seated Dons, black muzzles hovering inches from the heads of the most powerful men in Borgata.
In the middle of the chaos, Jordan Marchetti stood rigidly still.
His fists tightened inside his pockets while calculations flashed rapidly behind his eyes.
’Fastest extraction route for Father.’
’Weapon positions.’
’Cover angles.’
Every instinct in his body strained toward action, yet he remained motionless, waiting for the single opening that might keep his father alive.
Nearby, Jeremiah Castellano looked almost entertained.
Leaning casually against his father’s chair with folded arms, he watched the unfolding violence with a slow, fascinated smile spreading across his beautiful face.
In the chair, his father wore nearly the same expression.
To the Castellanos, this was not a crisis.
It was a performance.
Isidore Accardi, meanwhile, still had not looked up from the financial report in his hands.
He found a miscalculated number.
He pulled out his pen.
He circled it.
At the table, the ten Dons remained disturbingly composed.
They had existed in the underworld long enough that this was merely a business interruption.
Armando Ombra leaned back in his chair, entirely unbothered.
"It seems House Lombardi is failing to host a neutral ground as effectively as they run their nightclubs."
Gian Lombardi didn’t miss a beat.
"The Hub’s security is a collective responsibility, Don Armando. You should be more concerned that an attack of this scale could only occur if someone inside this room leaked the schedule."
The implication settled sharply across the chamber.
The lead attacker stepped forward before anyone could respond further. In one hand, he held a compact black device fitted with a red toggle switch.
"Everyone remain seated and cooperate! This building is wired. You are now hostages!"
Armando regarded him with mild curiosity.
"Do you know who we are?"
The masked man sneered.
"We know exactly who you are."
He lifted the detonator slightly, thumb twitching near the switch.
"You’re dead kings ruling a dying city. We’re just here to collect the crown."
Across the room, Caio’s attention shifted back toward Aren.
He watched as she carefully folded the paper wrapper of her cupcake into a neat square and tucked it into the pocket of her cardigan.
Her movements remained unhurried, precise, while her eyes drifted silently across the room with a calm that struck him as deeply unsettling.
Caio frowned.
’What the hell is she doing?’
Little did he know, Aren was counting.
’Twelve men.’
’Four submachine guns, eight handguns, twelve combat knives.’
’Three exit points.’
’Potential explosive device located center-left.’
Her gaze paused briefly on the man closest to her, who carried a submachine gun.
That weapon alone would be enough to clear the room. However, another thought soon hit her mind.
’This room is very beautiful.’
The mahogany table was polished to a mirror shine.
The cream-colored carpet looked very expensive.
One body already bled across the marble floor.
To open more arteries here would create a terrible cleaning problem for the staff. And likely an enormous maintenance bill for her new father.
She adjusted her strategy immediately:
’Minimize blood loss. Target pressure points and nerve clusters. Keep it tidy.’
At the head of the table, Gian Lombardi finally spoke.
"What do you want?"
The lead attacker stepped closer, his grip tightening on the detonator.
"We want the encryption keys for the—"
A small, pale hand suddenly went up before the lead attacker could finish his words.
It was raised with the tentative politeness of a student asking a teacher for permission to use the restroom.
For half a second, the air in the room stalled.
The attacker nearest to Aren reacted first. His weapon snapped toward her, the barrel leveling straight at her head.
"Put your hand down, girl! Sit still or you’re next!"
Aren blinked once.
"Ah. Sorry."
Her voice sounded genuinely apologetic.
"I only wanted to... um... how should I explain this..."
She lowered her gaze politely.
"I wanted to apologize beforehand."
The attacker frowned.
"What—"
Before he could finish the sentence, Aren moved.
One instant she stood beside the table.
The next, she dropped low and crossed the distance in a blur of motion, her sundress sweeping across the carpet as two fingers struck directly into the brachial plexus at the base of the man’s neck.
His arm went dead instantly.
The submachine gun slipped from his nerveless fingers.
Aren caught the weapon before it struck the carpet — to avoid the noise — and calmly drove the butt of the gun into the base of his skull with the exact force required for a three-minute blackout.
THWACK!
She moved to the second attacker before the first one had even hit the floor.
A swung fist — she ducked under it.
Her hand darted out to pinch the nerve in the man’s thigh, dropping him to his knees. She slid behind another, fingers hitting the spot at the base of his jaw, lulling him into instant unconsciousness.
Every movement was accompanied by a worried frown and a whisper of deep regret.
"Sorry."
"Be careful, you’ll fall sideways."
"Don’t worry, you’ll recover in an hour. Maybe more."
The sight of the Lombardi heiress dismantling the attackers with two mere fingers froze the room to ice.
For several stunned seconds, the armed guards, heirs, and advisors merely stared, entirely forgetting they were supposed to engage.
At last, Caio was the first to move.
He vaulted over the table in a single motion and drove a brutal strike into the nearest gunman before the others fully processed what was happening.
His guards followed immediately afterward, then the Marchetti men, then the Castellanos.
Jordan hit one attacker with enough force to fold him sideways across the carpet.
Jeremiah, meanwhile, remained perfectly poised amid the violence, watching Aren’s every movement with increasing fascination and an openly delighted grin.
As for Isidore...
He turned the page of his report.
At the center of the chaos, Aren reached the lead attacker.
Before the man could decide whether to activate the detonator, her hand closed around his wrist with terrifying precision.
"Please try not to struggle," she whispered near his ear. "It hurts more if you struggle."
The man ignored her advice entirely.
His muscles tensed.
Aren calmly guided his arm behind his back anyway. With a deft twist, his shoulder popped out of its socket.
Pop!
The sound was small.
The effect was not.
"HAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHH!"
His body collapsed in a heavy thud.
The detonator slipped from his hand, bouncing once before rolling harmlessly across the floor.
Aren stepped backward afterward, smoothing the front of her cream cardigan and tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear as though she had merely finished rearranging furniture.
Then suddenly—
The room tilted.
A sudden wave of cold swept through her body, her vision dimming at the edges.
’Physical error,’ she thought dimly. ’This body... is so weak.’
Years of narcotic abuse had hollowed Ariana’s health from the inside out. Her heart strained violently beneath the exertion while exhausted muscles screamed in protest after barely sixty seconds of sustained combat.
Aren reached for the edge of the mahogany table to steady herself, her face a ghostly shade of white.
Slowly, she looked around at the groaning bodies scattered across the floor and the stunned silence of the men and women still standing around the chamber.
"Excuse me," she said, barely audible. "I am... sorry for the mess."
Her voice weakened further.
"Does the staff... might they have more cupcakes? Or perhaps some tea? My blood sugar seems... um, a bit low."
No one answered her.
No one moved.
The rulers of Borgata’s underworld — men who commanded wealth, violence, governments, and fear itself — stared at her in utter silence.
In that moment, every one of them realized the same terrible truth: every single plan they had made to destroy House Lombardi was being torn to shreds.
