Chapter 5
The sight of Marco’s lifeless body sprawled across the Persian rug sent a wave of pure nausea through me. Sophie buried her face in my shoulder, her muffled sobs vibrating against my collarbone.
"Don't look, baby," I whispered frantically, turning her head away. "Keep your eyes closed. Don't look."
Dante didn't flinch. In the grim underworld he ruled, violent death was currency, but I saw the muscles along his spine go rigid as stone. Marco had been his right-hand man for a decade. He knelt down, two fingers checking the pulse point at Marco's wrist, then reached over and closed his lieutenant's glassy eyes.
"He took out Marco," Dante murmured, his voice deadly calm—the kind of calm that precedes a hurricane. "Marco was an ex-Marine. He had three guys with him on the upper gallery. Which means the rest of my men are already dead or neutralized."
"How could one man do this?" Teresa gasped, clutching her robe around her throat, her face ghostly white in the flashlight beam. "Miguel was an accountant, Dante! Not an assassin!"
"He isn't alone," Dante replied, standing up and stepping over the pool of blood. He grabbed a keycard from Marco’s tactical vest and clicked a button on the wall panel. An emergency red auxiliary light flickered to life, casting the vast study in a bloody, surreal glow. "Miguel didn't survive three years on the run by himself. The Valentis funded him. Salvatore Valenti has wanted my head on a pike since my father took the docks. He gave Miguel the muscle, the weapons, and the intel."
"He said ten minutes," I choked out, panic squeezing my throat. "Dante, he wants Sophie! He doesn't care about the ledger right now, he wants her!"
"He wants both," Dante said coldly, turning toward a massive painting of the Amalfi coast hanging behind his desk. He reached behind the canvas and swung it outward on a hidden hinge, revealing a heavy digital safe embedded into the concrete wall. He punched in an eight-digit code.
The safe swung open with a pneumatic hiss. Inside wasn't stacks of cash or gold bars. There was a single titanium external drive and an array of tactical gear: two spare magazines, a suppressed Glock 19, and a lightweight Kevlar vest.
Dante pulled the vest out and threw it at me. "Put this on her."
"Dante—"
"Put it on Sophie. Now, Elena!"
I didn't argue. My trembling hands stripped Sophie’s star-shaped pillow from her grip, wrapping the thick, heavy Kevlar around her small torso. It hung down past her knees like an oversized coat, but it covered her vitals. She sniffled quietly, holding onto my collar. "Mama, where is Daddy? Did Daddy do this?"
My heart shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. How could I explain to a five-year-old child that the father she only knew from bedtime stories and framed photographs had turned into a butcher stalking us through the dark?
"Daddy is... sick, sweetheart," I whispered, blinking back tears of absolute terror. "He's very sick. But Mr. Moretti is going to protect us. Okay? You stay quiet like a little mouse."
She nodded bravely, pressing her lips together.
Dante shoved the titanium drive into his pocket, racked the slide of his Glock, and handed it to me.
I stared at the cold, heavy steel in his palm. "I don't know how to shoot this."
"Point it at anything that opens a door without my voice, and pull the trigger until it stops clicking," Dante said, wrapping my fingers around the textured grip. His hand was warm, solid, completely steady against my shivering skin. "There are no second chances tonight, Elena. If Miguel gets his hands on you, he won't take you back to a cottage in Brooklyn. He’ll use Sophie as a shield and leave you in a shallow ditch."
Suddenly, the distinct smell of gasoline drifted beneath the study doors.
Thick, gray smoke began curling under the crack at the base of the frame.
"He's torching the ground floor," Teresa cried out, coughing as the smoke hit her throat. "He's smoking us out!"
"The roof access is blocked by the fire," Dante analyzed quickly, his eyes darting across the room. "The front foyer is a kill box. The only way out of this wing without walking into a crossfire is back through the service tunnels."
"Back where he came from?" I asked in disbelief. "That's insane! He knows those tunnels!"
"He knows the main line," Dante corrected, grabbing a heavy crowbar from an emergency kit inside the safe. "He doesn't know the cistern runoff beneath the wine cellar. My father built a bypass during the eighty-five turf war. It leads directly to the boathouse on the sound. If my speedboat is still there, we can get out by water."
A loud bang shook the double doors.
Then came the sound of splintering wood as an axe blade bit into the mahogany panel from the outside.
*Crack!*
The blade tore free, leaving a jagged vertical hole in the door. Through the gap, in the flickering orange glow of flames creeping down the hallway, two crazed, bloodshot eyes stared into the room.
The face was scarred down the left cheek, gaunt, the beard wild and untrimmed. But the jawline, the deep brown irises, the cruel curve of the mouth—it was Miguel.
"Elena!" his voice roared through the hole, raspy and maniacal over the crackle of the spreading fire. "Open the damn door! Bring me my daughter! You think Moretti is going to save you? He murdered his own father, Elena! He's a monster!"
"Go to hell, Miguel!" I screamed back, tears streaming down my face.
Miguel’s eyes narrowed into slits of pure venom. "Then burn with him," he snarled.
A metal cylinder rolled through the hole in the door, clattering across the hardwood floor.
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"Flashbang!" Dante yelled, diving across the room, throwing his massive frame over Sophie and me just as the world erupted in a blinding flash of white light and a deafening, thunderous roar.
***
