Chapter 352: They’re Here

Rechelle’s thumb stayed frozen over the screen.

Beyond the gate, the three masked men were already moving with purpose. One checked the street. One faced the wall. The third waited by the open van door as more shapes shifted behind him. It did not look like a mistake. It did not look like lost delivery men or workers at the wrong address. It looked like the beginning of an entry.

Her body reacted before her thoughts finished forming.

She stepped back from the window hard enough that her shoulder brushed the wall. The phone nearly slipped from her hand. For one dangerous second she only stood there, breath caught, eyes locked on the dark clothes and covered faces outside. Then survival cut through the shock.

Move.

Rechelle turned and ran for the front.

Her bare feet struck the floor in quick, uneven steps as she crossed the living room and reached the main door. She locked the handle first, then the upper latch, fingers fumbling once before the metal clicked into place. It was not enough and she knew it. A lock only bought seconds against men who had already chosen this house. Seconds were still better than standing still.

She spun away, rushed back to the living room table, snatched her phone properly this time, and started for the stairs.

The mansion suddenly felt too open.

Too many windows.

Too many angles.

Too much polished space with nowhere solid to disappear into.

Every wide doorway and glass panel that once made the house feel expensive now felt like a liability. She took the stairs two at a time, phone clenched in one hand, the other sliding along the rail for balance. Behind her, the ground floor stretched quiet for the moment, but the quiet no longer felt safe. It felt like the held breath before noise.

At the top of the stairs she turned toward the inner hallway, the part of the house farthest from the front gate and closest to the rooms with heavier doors. Her thumb found Lucas’s name. She hit the call.

The line began to ring as she moved.

Once.

Twice.

She entered one of the side rooms, shut the door behind her, and locked it with her free hand. Her chest was rising too fast. The phone kept ringing against her ear. Come on. Come on. Answer. The same man who had called her over and over earlier now felt impossibly far away, trapped somewhere on a road she could not see.

In the kitchen below, the food she had been cooking had already started to smoke. She never turned off the gas. The smell of burning dinner was beginning to rise through the house, sharp and useless.

Outside the mansion, the Dirty Saints had been watching long enough.

The street stayed quiet. No patrol cars. No guards at the gate. No movement of staff, deliveries, or neighbors close enough to matter. For a rich house, the place looked almost abandoned in the fading light. Curtains hung still. No one walked the grounds. No security light snapped on at their presence. That was all the confirmation they needed.

Their boss spoke in a low voice from inside the van.

"We’re not sitting out here all evening. Too clean a neighborhood. A van parked too long gets noticed. We go in now. If she’s home, we take her. If the place is empty, we stay inside and wait until she comes back. Camping in a parked van here is more suspicious than being inside the house. One of you drives off as soon as we’re through and waits for the signal."

No one argued.

The plan was simple and ugly. Enter fast. Clear the rooms. If the target was gone, hold the mansion until she returned. The street would look ordinary again once the van left. The house would do the rest of the work for them.

Three masked men moved first.

The side door of the van slid open. Boots hit the road. They crossed toward the gate with quick, practiced steps, heads low, bodies angled to reduce how long any passing car might remember them. One man stayed with the vehicle, engine ready, already prepared to pull away the moment the others were inside the grounds. The rest of the team shifted behind the first three, waiting for the breach.

At the gate, they worked without wasting motion.

A metallic sound carried first ~ sharp, controlled, the resistance of a lock giving way under force. Not a full crash yet. Then a heavier impact followed as the path opened and the men pushed through onto the grounds. Their boots crossed the clean stone and grass with the confidence of people who had done this before. One of them signaled back. The van began to roll almost at once, leaving the street before any curious neighbor had a clean reason to stare too long.

Inside the house, Rechelle heard it.

She pressed her back to the wall beside the locked bedroom door, phone still ringing against her ear, blood loud in her head. The waiting outside was over. Another sound came next, closer and heavier, the kind that belonged to people forcing their way where they had not been invited. Her free hand tightened around the phone. Answer. Please answer.

Then the call connected.

"Rechelle?"

Lucas’s voice came through hard and immediate, already alert.

Relief hit her so fast her knees almost gave. For a split second the sound of him was enough to make the locked room feel less like a trap. Then the fear rushed back stronger than before, because hearing him did not remove the men outside. It only proved how far away he still was.

"Lucas~" Her voice broke on his name. She forced the rest out in a rush, words tumbling over each other. "There are men outside. Masked. A van. They came out of it and moved toward the gate. I saw them. They’re here."

On the other end of the line, the two-hour journey, the taxi, Aaron, and every unanswered call from earlier all collapsed into a single point.

Rechelle stayed pressed against the wall, phone hard against her ear, listening to her own breathing and the fading afternoon beyond the door, while below her the Dirty Saints finished crossing from the street into the grounds of a mansion that no longer felt safe at all.