Chapter 6
A high-pitched ringing consumed my ears. My vision was swimming in blinding white streaks, my lungs burning from the sudden rush of acrid smoke that poured through the blasted door.
Dante was already up. Despite taking the brunt of the concussive force on his back, he was moving with terrifying precision. He hauled me to my feet by my collar, grabbing Sophie with his other arm.
"Move!" he shouted, though his voice sounded like it was coming from underwater.
The double doors groaned and collapsed outward into the room as a wall of fire rolled across the ceiling. Two armed men in black tactical gear stepped through the flames, their assault rifles raised.
*Bang! Bang! Bang!*
Dante fired from the hip with his Kimber .45. The first man dropped instantly, clutching his chest. The second man fired a burst of automatic rounds, chewing up the mahogany desk into splinters. Dante lunged forward, grabbing the barrel of the rifle, twisting the man’s wrist until bone snapped, and slammed his elbow into the attacker's throat. The man crumpled to the floor, motionless.
"Teresa, move!" Dante barked.
His mother was coughing violently from the smoke, but years of living in a mafia dynasty had instilled an instinct for survival. She grabbed a heavy iron poker from the fireplace, her eyes wild, and pushed through the side door leading into the private library.
We scrambled through the burning west wing, the heat blistering against our skin. Smoke hung thick and suffocating like a black velvet curtain. Dante led us through a hidden pantry door, down a narrow spiral staircase that seemed to descend forever into the cold earth.
The air shifted abruptly from scorching heat to icy dampness.
We were in the wine cellar beneath the mansion. Hundreds of dusty vintage bottles lined the limestone arches. The floor was slick with condensation, and the distant rumble of the burning estate above sounded like rolling thunder.
"Are you hit?" Dante asked, turning to me under the dim glow of his flashlight. His face was smeared with soot and blood, his white shirt torn open at the shoulder.
"No," I gasped, checking Sophie desperately. "Sophie, look at Mama. Are you hurt?"
Sophie shook her head, tears cutting clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks. "Bruno... Mama, where is Bruno?"
A low whine drifted from the shadows at the end of the vaulted cellar.
From behind a row of oak aging barrels, a dark shape limped into the light.
"Bruno!" Sophie cried out.
It was the Cane Corso. His left flank was bloody, grazed by a bullet, but he was alive. The massive dog trotted toward us, his tail giving a weak wag before he pressed his bruised snout firmly into Sophie's outstretched hands, letting out a soft whimper. He had fought his way through the tunnels, outrunning the gunfire to find his master.
"Good boy," Dante whispered, his hand resting on the dog’s scarred head. "Good boy, Bruno."
"Dante," Teresa said, leaning against a stone archway, catching her breath. "The cistern gate. Is it clear?"
Dante stepped toward a rusted iron door set into the foundation wall at the back of the cellar. He pulled a heavy ring of brass keys from his pocket and inserted the longest one into the antique deadbolt.
*Clack.*
The heavy iron door swung open, revealing a stone drainage canal partially filled with freezing, ankle-deep water that rushed toward the Long Island Sound.
"The boat slip is three hundred yards down this pipe," Dante said, turning to me. "Once we reach the shore, I have a center-console boat tied to the dock. We take it across the sound to Connecticut. I have a safe house in Greenwich where Valenti can't touch us."
"And what about Miguel?" I asked, my voice trembling with cold and adrenaline. "He won't stop, Dante. He knows the boat slip leads to the water. That was the whole point of the Prohibition route!"
Dante looked at me, his eyes gleaming in the shadows like polished flint. "He'll be waiting at the dock. He thinks we're trapped rats. He expects me to bring the drive so I can bargain for our lives."
"Are you going to?"
Dante reached into his pocket and pulled out the titanium drive. He held it up between two fingers.
"This drive holds enough dirt to bury five crime families and twenty corrupt politicians," he said coldly. "Miguel thinks it's his ticket to immortality. But he forgot one thing."
Dante tapped the casing of the drive with his thumbnail. A tiny red LED light pulsed faintly from the bottom seam.
"It has a localized remote detonator built into the battery pack," Dante said, a grim smile touching the corner of his lips. "Enough C4 to level an engine block. My father wasn't an idiot, Elena. He never kept secrets without a dead-man's switch."
Before we could take a single step into the water, a sharp, metallic sound echoed from the spiral staircase behind us.
*Click.*
The beam of a high-powered tactical spotlight snapped on, pinning Dante, Sophie, and me against the rusted iron gate in blinding luminescence.
"Touching reunion, Dante," a mocking voice echoed off the damp stone walls.
Standing at the base of the staircase, an assault rifle slung lazily over his shoulder, was Miguel. But he wasn't alone.
Flanking him were four heavily armed men wearing matching black fatigues, and standing right beside him was an older man in a tailored cashmere overcoat, smoking a cigar without a hint of fear.
Salvatore Valenti.
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"You always were too sentimental for this business, Moretti," Valenti said, exhaling a thick plume of gray smoke into the cellar air. "Drop the iron. Put your hands on your head. Or I have my boys turn that little girl into Swiss cheese."
***
