A feared crime lord spent days trying to get his traumatized daughter to eat, until an exhausted waitress made her speak a single word. / Chapter 106 / 120

Chapter 106 - THE IRON PASSAGE

Dante did not hesitate. He did not wait for the smoke to clear.

He kicked the passenger door open with explosive force, using the heavy steel panel as a moving shield against the shotgun blasts. His carbine came up in a single, fluid strike, barking three times in rapid succession through the gap in the door frame.

The lead shooter took two rounds to the center chest and collapsed into the snow without a sound. Dante pivoted smoothly, ignoring the blinding agony tearing through his wounded shoulder, and stitched a burst across the windshield of the Dodge Charger, shattering the glass and driving the second team of gunmen back behind their engine block.

"Sal! Get them through the maintenance door!" Dante shouted over the deafening roar of the gunfire.

Sal kicked his door open, pulled a short 12-gauge shotgun from beneath his seat, and pumped a round into the air, laying down suppressive fire toward the Charger. "Go! Go! I'm right behind you!"

Elena scrambled out of the rear doors of the bread truck, holding Sofia tightly against her chest, her body low to the asphalt. She didn't look at the dead men in the snow; she didn't look at the flashing amber light. She ran straight toward the rusted iron pedestrian door cut into the granite face of the toll plaza’s utility tunnel.

Dante moved backward, covering their retreat with precise, single-shot fire that kept the surviving contractors pinned behind their vehicles. A shotgun slug grazed his thigh, tearing through his dark trousers and drawing a hot streak of crimson, but he didn't even break stride.

He reached the iron utility door just as Elena hauled it open.

"Inside!" Dante barked, shoving Elena and Sofia through the threshold, followed by Sal, who stumbled through the opening, gasping for breath.

Dante stepped through last. He grabbed a heavy steel crowbar resting against the interior wall and jammed it through the locking handles, wedging the ancient door shut just as a hail of buckshot slammed against the exterior iron with the sound of a sledgehammer striking an anvil.

They were inside the mountain.

The maintenance tunnel was narrow, damp, and lit only by emergency sodium-vapor lamps that hummed with a low, sickly yellow glare. The air smelled of wet concrete, electrical grease, and forty years of stagnant cold.

"Are you hit, Boss?" Sal wheezed, leaning against the damp wall, clutching his ribs.

"A scratch," Dante dismissed, though his pant leg was already soaked with blood. He turned to Elena. "Sofia?"

Elena was kneeling on the concrete, inspecting the child with frantic hands. Sofia was trembling, but her eyes were clear, her face calm. She looked at Dante’s bleeding leg, then reached into her pocket, pulled out the purple crayon, and pressed the blunt wax against his bloody hand.

"It’s okay, Papa," Sofia whispered, her voice steady and pure. "The green roof is at the end of the tunnel."

Dante looked up the long, vaulted corridor.

At the far end of the tunnel, three hundred yards up an incline cut through the living rock of the highlands, a pair of ancient, weathered oak double doors stood beneath a carved stone transom.

Carved into the stone above the doors, illuminated by the pale daylight filtering through a high iron grating, was the name: