Chapter 85 - Cold Storage and Cold Eyes
Before the echoing crash of the falling light had even faded, the warehouse became an arena of slaughter.
A shadow descended from the gantry walkways like an avenging wraith. The first mercenary—standing near the van’s front quarter panel—didn't even have time to raise his Heckler & Koch submachine gun. A sound suppressed shot hissed from the dark, striking him precisely behind the ear. He dropped limp against the dented fender without a cry.
"Ambush!" Moreau roared, instantly diving behind the rear tire of the van and drawing a customized Beretta 92FS. "Flares! Kill the lights and light the flares!"
Another mercenary fumbled for an emergency phosphor flare at his belt. As the crimson magnesium sputtered to life, casting demonic, dancing shadows across the steel rafters, it revealed Dante Moretti.
Dante was not wearing tactical armor. He wore his charcoal wool overcoat, drenched in rain, his eyes cold and hollow like twin obsidian stones. His movement was terrifyingly smooth—there was no hesitation, no theatricality, only the pure, lethal geometry of a predator who had spent his youth in the deepest trenches of underworld warfare.
*Pht. Pht.*
Two rapid double-taps took down the flare-bearer before the rod even hit the concrete. Dante closed the distance, firing on the move. The remaining two French mercenaries scrambled for cover behind a stack of rusted steel shipping pallets, opening up with frantic, deafening bursts of automatic fire that chewed into the concrete pillars, sending shards of stone flying.
Maya didn't hesitate.
The moment the gunfire erupted, she lunged forward, throwing her body over Sofia to shield the child from the ricocheting lead. Sofia buried her face into Maya’s stomach, her small hands clamping over her ears.
"Stay down, baby! Stay down!" Maya screamed over the roaring muzzle blasts.
Through the gaps in the wooden pallets, Dante advanced. He didn't take cover; he moved using the blind angles of the mercenaries' fire. When the first shooter paused to swap magazines, Dante vaulted the lower pallet, landed directly on the man’s chest, and drove a combat blade upward through the mercenary’s sternum with brutal, clinical finality.
He retrieved the fallen man's submachine gun in the same fluid motion, spun, and stitched a burst across the second gunman’s chest, dropping him instantly into the pool of engine oil spreading beneath the van.
Silence crashed back into the warehouse, heavy and suffocating, punctuated only by the sizzle of the dying red flare in a puddle of water.
Dante turned toward the pillar. His eyes found Maya, then drifted down to Sofia’s trembling form. For a fraction of a second, the lethal ice in his expression cracked, revealing the raw, bleeding soul of a father.
"Sofia," Dante choked out.
"Dante, behind you!" Maya shrieked.
May you like
From beneath the far side of the van, Jean-Luc Moreau surged forward. He didn't aim at Dante—he knew Dante’s reflexes were faster. Instead, Moreau lunged straight toward Sofia, his trench knife extended in a desperate, vicious bid to take the child hostage.
***
