Chapter 30 - The Trigger and the Fall
The silence that descended upon the vault was more concussive than any explosion.
Dante’s face went completely, terrifyingly blank.
"What did you do?" Dante whispered, the knife in his hand lowering by an inch.
Marcone laughed—a wet, dying rattle that ended in a spray of dark crimson against the wall. "The Commission sent twenty men to your estate ten minutes ago. Your perimeter guards... they're already dead. Viktor is dead. And the little girl..."
Before Marcone could finish the sentence, Dante moved like striking lightning.
The heavy combat boot slammed directly into Marcone’s chest, pinning the dying man against the brick. In the same motion, Dante seized Marcone’s left hand, crushing the bones of his fingers until the blinking remote fell from his grip, clattering harmlessly against the stone.
Dante drove the blade through Marcone's shoulder, pinning him to the wall, his face inches from the dying man's eyes.
"Tell me who gave the order," Dante snarled, a roar of unmitigated fury ripping from his soul. "TELL ME!"
Marcone’s eyes rolled back into his head. His breath rattled one final time in his throat, and his body went entirely limp against the steel knife, taking the names of the conspirators with him into the dark.
"Boss!" Marcus yelled, his satellite phone pressed to his ear, his face pale as a ghost. "The estate comms just went dead! Long Island sector three just reported automatic gunfire and heavy explosions at the main gate!"
Maya scrambled to her feet, ignoring the blinding pain in her ribs, her hands shaking as she ran to Dante’s side. "Dante! Sofia!"
Dante wrenched the knife from the corpse and turned, his dark eyes wide with an agony so absolute it tore through his warrior's mask.
"Marcus, get the bird on the roof!" Dante bellowed, sprinting toward the exit, dragging Maya with him in an iron grip. "I don't care if the engine blows, get that helicopter in the air NOW!"
They burst out of the vault, racing through the smoking ruins of the cold-storage plant, taking the metal stairs three at a time toward the roof access. Rain lashed at their faces as they exploded out onto the rain-swept rooftop overlooking the dark, turbulent waters of the East River.
The twin turbines of a Blackwood extraction helicopter were already whining to life, the rotors beating a frantic, deafening rhythm against the howling storm.
Maya clung to Dante’s coat, the wind whipping her hair across her face, her heart hammering against her ribs so violently she could barely breathe. Sofia was alone in that house. The terrified, sweet little girl who had just drawn a picture of her in purple wax was trapped in a fortress under siege.
Dante grabbed the satellite radio from Marcus’s vest, pressing the channel to the secure emergency frequency of the safe room inside the Long Island estate.
"Sofia!" Dante roared into the radio over the deafening scream of the helicopter rotors. "Sofia, answer me! Are you in the vault?!"
Static hissed through the speaker.
For three agonizing, breathless seconds, there was only the sound of rain and the drone of the open frequency.
Then, through the speaker, came the sound of heavy iron hinges groaning under a massive impact.
*BOOM.*
A heavy explosion shook the audio feed, followed by the sound of splintering mahogany wood and the sharp, stuttering roar of automatic gunfire echoing inside the marble halls of the Blackwood mansion.
Then, a tiny, terrified sob cut through the speaker.
*"Papa...?"* Sofia’s small voice cried, drowned in absolute horror. *"They broke the door. Papa, they have Mommy's picture... Papa, help me—"*
The tiny voice was abruptly cut short by a rough, unfamiliar male voice coming through the radio transmitter, cold and dripping with venom:
*"You're too late, Blackwood. The girl belongs to the Families now."*
A single gunshot cracked through the speaker.
May you like
Then, the line went dead.
Dante stood frozen beneath the beating helicopter blades, the radio trembling in his bloody hand, his eyes wide in catastrophic horror as Maya let out a scream that shattered into the howling rain.
