The Art Gallery Ambush
The travel from Dante’s penthouse, The Eclipse Tower, LA to The Lumina Art Gallery, downtown LA consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The Lumina Art Gallery smelled of expensive wine and nervous money. Crystal chandeliers threw fractals of light across white walls where canvases hung in precise intervals. Nadia stood near the back, her cocktail dress feeling like a costume, her eyes never stopping their sweep of the room.
Isadora touched her elbow. “Relax. You’re going to draw more attention than the art.”
“I can’t relax.” Nadia’s voice came out thin. “Jace is in the children’s activity room with the sitter. Reid Covington is still out there. Dante just texted that the FBI found two more listening devices in the bakery.”
“Which is exactly why we’re here. The auction closes in forty minutes. By midnight, your son’s drawings will have raised sixty thousand dollars for the children’s hospital, and the Covingtons will have lost their leverage.” Isadora squeezed her arm. “You can’t hide forever. But you can build a wall they can’t climb.”
Nadia let herself breathe. Isadora had planned this for weeks—a charity event where Jace’s artwork would be the centerpiece, where donors could bid on abstract watercolors drawn by an eight-year-old with too much emotion and not enough vocabulary. It was supposed to be safe. Public. Bright.
The gallery clock read 7:47 PM.
She checked her phone again. Dante was ten minutes out, finishing a deposition with the district attorney. Flynn had three men positioned at the entrances. Everything was under control.
That was when the lights went out.
Not all of them. The chandeliers stayed lit, but the perimeter lights—the soft halogens along the hallway to the children’s room—died with a soft electrical cough. A murmur rippled through the crowd. Someone laughed, thinking it was a technical glitch.
Nadia’s blood turned to ice.
She was moving before her brain caught up, heels clicking against marble, pushing through clusters of well-dressed patrons who didn’t understand. Isadora called after her. The hallway stretched ahead, dark except for emergency exit signs casting red pools on the floor.
The door to the children’s activity room stood ajar.
Through the gap, she saw the sitter on the floor, unconscious or worse. Art supplies scattered like casualties. A single red construction-paper heart someone had cut out, now trampled.
And Jace, backed into the corner, his small body rigid.
Reid Covington knelt in front of him, one hand gripping Jace’s shoulder, the other holding a matte black pistol aimed at the floor. He looked up when Nadia entered, and his smile was the worst thing she had ever seen.
“Mrs. Montclair. I was hoping you’d find your way here. Saves me the trouble of a ransom note.”
Nadia’s throat closed. She could hear Isadora behind her, breath catching. The gallery noise seemed to come from another dimension.
“Let him go.” Her voice didn’t sound like hers. “He’s a child.”
“He’s leverage.” Reid stood, pulling Jace up with him. The gun came level with Nadia’s chest. “Your lover and his pet FBI agent think they’ve won because they seized some servers and froze some accounts. But my father taught me something valuable: wealth is just stored time. And time is just leverage waiting to be used.”
Jace’s eyes were wet, but he wasn’t crying. His jaw was set in a way that broke Nadia’s heart—he was trying to be brave, trying to be the man he thought his mother needed.
“The hard drive,” Reid said. “The original. Not the copy your boyfriend handed to the Feds. I know you have it. You’re too smart to give them everything.”
Nadia’s hands trembled. She pressed them against her thighs to still them. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“Don’t.” Reid’s voice snapped. He pressed the barrel against Jace’s temple. The boy’s composure cracked, a small whimper escaping. “Don’t insult my intelligence. You had forty-eight hours to decrypt it. You found something. Something valuable enough that you started auctioning your bastard’s finger paintings to raise a war chest.”
“They’re not finger paintings.” The words came out before she could stop them. “They’re his art. He’s talented.”
Reid laughed. It was an ugly sound. “I don’t care if he’s the next Picasso. Give me the drive, or I paint this room with his brains and let you explain it to the cameras outside.”
Nadia’s mind raced. The hard drive was in her purse, wrapped in a cloth napkin from the bakery. She’d been carrying it for days, not trusting anywhere else. She could give it to him. She could save Jace. But she knew, with absolute certainty, that Reid would kill them both the moment he had what he wanted.
She needed time.
She needed chaos.
She looked past Reid, at the wall behind him. A glass sculpture—an abstract bird with wings of blown crystal—sat on a pedestal. The artist had called it “Flight.” Isadora had paid twelve thousand dollars for it as a donation to the auction.
Nadia shifted her weight. Reid’s eyes tracked her.
“Don’t.”
She looked at Jace. His face was pale, but his eyes met hers. He was smart. He was her son.
She gave him a tiny nod.
Then she grabbed the nearest thing—a tray of champagne flutes from the refreshment table—and hurled it at the glass bird.
The shatter was apocalyptic.
Crystal exploded in every direction, catching the chandelier light, turning the room into a kaleidoscope of razor-sharp rain. Reid flinched, bringing his free hand up to shield his face. The gun wavered.
Jace didn’t hesitate.
He bit down on Reid’s hand, hard, and the man screamed. The gun clattered to the floor. Jace was running, his small legs pumping, crossing the room in seconds. Nadia caught him, crushed him against her body, and spun to put herself between her son and the threat.
Reid was already moving, reaching for the fallen weapon.
And then the main door exploded inward.
Dante Thorne came through like a man who had run through hell to get there. His jacket was gone, his shirt untucked, his tie hanging loose. Sweat streaked his face. Behind him, Flynn moved with cold precision, flanked by three more men in tactical vests.
Reid grabbed the gun.
He didn’t fire. Probably because he knew he was outnumbered. Probably because he knew his father’s empire was crumbling. Instead, he bolted for the emergency exit, shoulder-checking a waitress, disappearing into the service hallway.
Flynn went after him without a word. His footsteps echoed, then faded.
Dante crossed the room in four strides. He dropped to his knees in front of Nadia and Jace, his breathing ragged, his hands shaking as he reached for them. He didn’t speak. He just touched Jace’s face, then Nadia’s, as if confirming they were real.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice cracked. “I should have been there. For the first step. The first word. The first everything.”
Nadia couldn’t speak. She held Jace so tight she thought she might break him, but he didn’t complain. He wrapped his small arms around her neck and buried his face in her shoulder.
From somewhere down the hallway, she heard raised voices, a scuffle, and then Flynn’s calm baritone: “Covington, you’re under arrest for kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, and being the dumbest rich kid I’ve ever met.”
Through the gallery speakers, someone’s phone began to play classical music. The auction was starting.
Jace pulled back just enough to look at Dante. His eyes were red, his cheeks wet, but there was something fierce in his face. “Daddy?”
The word hung in the air like a held breath.
Dante’s composure finally broke. Tears tracked through the dust on his face. “Yeah, buddy. I’m here.”
Jace untangled himself from Nadia and stepped forward. He looked at this man—this stranger who carried himself like a soldier and looked at them like they were the only thing in the world worth saving. Then he wrapped his small arms around Dante’s neck.
“It’s okay, Daddy. You’re here now. Can we go get ice cream?”