Chapter 8
The drainage canal was a nightmare of rushing black water, slick moss, and choking echoes. The water rose to my knees, so cold it felt like hundreds of needles stabbing through my skin. Dante carried Sophie on his shoulders, his tactical light cutting a frantic circle through the darkness ahead, while Bruno swam and waded alongside us, his breathing coming in ragged, bloody gasps.
Behind us, the iron gate rattled violently against the crowbar.
*CLANG! CLANG!*
"They have a sledgehammer," Teresa panted, struggling to keep her footing against the current. I grabbed her elbow, pulling her along. The woman was nearly seventy, her silk robe soaked and heavy, but the will to live burned fiercely in her eyes. "Dante... the lock won't hold more than two minutes!"
"We don't need two minutes," Dante shouted back over the roar of the water. "We need sixty seconds! Keep moving!"
Ahead, the circular concrete pipe finally opened up. The smell of salt air and rotting seaweed hit our faces, mixed with the biting chill of the autumn storm.
We stumbled out of the drainage culvert onto the rocky shoreline of the Long Island Sound.
The rain was coming down in sheets, whipped sideways by gale-force winds. The waves crashed against the stone breakwater with terrifying violence. And towering above us on the cliffside, the Moretti estate was an inferno. Flames thirty feet high licked the black sky, turning the clouds into an apocalyptic shade of bruised orange. Three generations of wealth, secrets, and blood were turning to ash before our eyes.
"The boat!" Dante pointed toward a long wooden dock that jutted out into the churning bay.
Tied to the end of the slip was a sleek, thirty-foot Midnight Express center-console powerboat, rocking violently against its moorings.
"Get Sophie aboard!" Dante ordered, passing my daughter down into my arms.
I scrambled down the slippery wooden planks of the dock, the wind almost tearing Sophie from my grip. I leaped over the gunwale, landing on the fiberglass deck, and pushed Sophie into the small, enclosed cuddy cabin below the helm.
"Stay here, baby! Do not come out!" I locked the cabin hatch, leaving a crack for air.
Teresa made it onto the boat next, collapsing onto the leather bench seat at the stern, clutching her chest as she gasped for breath.
Dante reached the dock, untying the thick bowline. Bruno leaped onto the deck, collapsing onto the floorboards, exhausted and shivering.
Suddenly, a loud crack echoed from the tree line along the shore.
A rifle bullet tore through the wooden piling inches from Dante’s head, sending splinters flying into his cheek.
Dante dove onto the deck of the boat just as another volley of gunfire stitched across the fiberglass hull.
Emerging from the rocks by the culvert were Miguel and Salvatore Valenti, accompanied by two surviving mercenaries. Miguel was drenched in canal filth, his eyes wild, holding an assault rifle at the ready.
"Dante!" Miguel screamed over the howling wind and crashing waves. "You aren't leaving with my family!"
Dante scrambled to the helm, hit the dual ignition switches, and the twin four-hundred-horsepower outboard engines roared to life with a deep, guttural thrum that vibrated through the hull.
"Untie the stern line!" Dante yelled at me.
I lunged toward the stern, grabbing the heavy rope knotted around the cleat. The wet nylon was pulled taut by the wind, fighting my frozen fingers.
Miguel charged down the wooden dock, firing blindly.
*Crack! Crack!*
A bullet shattered the boat's acrylic windshield, showering Dante in glass. Another round struck the fiberglass inches from my hip.
"Elena, move!" Teresa screamed, lunging forward with surprising strength. She threw her body weight against the stern line, helping me wrench the soaked loop free from the dock cleat.
The line whipped clear.
Dante slammed the twin throttles forward.
The massive outboards dug into the churning black water, sending a massive wall of white spray into the air as the boat surged away from the dock.
Miguel reached the edge of the slip just as the boat cleared the pilings. He dropped his empty rifle, drew a sidearm from his waistband, and leveled it straight at the helm—straight at Dante.
"I'm taking back what's mine!" Miguel shrieked into the storm.
He didn't fire at Dante.
He swung the barrel toward the cabin door where Sophie was locked inside.
"NO!" I screamed.
Dante saw the movement. Without a second's hesitation, he abandoned the helm, pulled the titanium drive from his pocket, and held it high above his head in the glare of the boat’s aft floodlight.
"Looking for this, Miguel?!" Dante roared across the widening gap of dark water.
Miguel’s eyes locked onto the drive. Greed, instinctive and incurable, overrode everything else. His gun hesitated.
Dante pulled a small transmitter fob from his belt with his teeth, pressed the toggle switch with his thumb, and hurled the titanium drive with all his might straight back toward the dock.
The drive clattered against the wet wooden boards, skidding right to Miguel’s boots.
Miguel looked down, a triumphant, psychotic grin splitting his face. He bent over and scooped the drive into his trembling fingers. "I win," he whispered.
Fifty yards away, Dante looked back over the stern, his face grim and remorseless.
"Rest in peace, Miguel," Dante said softly.
He released the switch.
A blinding flash of orange fire tore through the darkness of the slip. A concussive shockwave rippled across the water, rocking our boat violently as the entire end of the wooden dock disintegrated into a storm of shattered timber, smoke, and fire.
May you like
Salvatore Valenti was thrown backward into the rocks, while the spot where Miguel had stood was consumed by an expanding ball of flame that vanished into the roaring surf.
***
