Chapter 86 - The Mother's Blade
Maya didn't think. There was no calculation, no fear for her own life, no hesitation.
As Moreau lunged toward Sofia, Maya sprang from her crouch like a cornered tigress. She didn't have a gun. She didn't have tactical training. But she had the eight-inch carbon-steel chef’s knife she had slipped into her waistband before the Cleavers had dragged her out of Bellanote.
With a primal scream that tore from the deepest chamber of her soul, Maya drove the kitchen blade down with both hands.
The heavy steel found Moreau's extended forearm, slicing through the tactical sleeve and biting deep into the muscle and tendon above his wrist. The Frenchman howled in shock and pain, his grip failing as his combat knife clattered harmlessly across the concrete.
"Bitch!" Moreau snarled, swinging his left fist with brutal, bone-crushing force.
The blow caught Maya across the cheek, sending her crashing hard against the concrete floor. Her vision flashed white with pain, the metallic taste of blood flooding her mouth.
Moreau spun, drawing his backup pistol from an ankle holster, his face twisted in rabid fury. He leveled the barrel straight at Maya’s forehead.
He never pulled the trigger.
A hand clad in black leather clamped around Moreau's throat like a hydraulic vise.
Dante lifted the two-hundred-pound mercenary clean off the ground by his neck, slamming him backward into the corrugated steel wall of the warehouse with an impact that made the iron beams shudder. The pistol flew from Moreau's fingers, clattering into the dark.
Dante didn't shoot him. That would be too quick, too merciful.
With cold, deliberate savagery, Dante drove his fist into Moreau's ribs, snapping bone. Then another strike shattered the mercenary's knee. Moreau screamed, dangling helpless in Dante’s iron grip, his heels drumming frantically against the wall as his breath was crushed from his lungs.
"Who ordered the hit?" Dante whispered, his voice so quiet, so devoid of humanity, that Moreau's defiant eyes widened with genuine, paralyzing terror.
"The... the Tribunal..." Moreau choked out, spittle and blood bubbling on his lips. "Palermo... Don Corvo... and... and your own..."
"My own what?" Dante hissed, his thumb digging into the pressure point beneath Moreau's ear.
"Your own... blood in New York..." Moreau wheezed, his face turning dark purple. "The covenant... was signed by six... but the seventh... was inside your own council..."
Dante didn't flinch. With a single, sharp twist of his shoulders, he broke Jean-Luc Moreau’s neck.
The lifeless body slumped into the dirt like a sack of wet salt.
Dante let the body drop. He stood there for a second, his chest heaving, his hands stained with the blood of his enemies, the ghost of Moreau’s revelation echoing through the hollow cavern of the pier.
Then, a tiny, hesitant sound broke through the ringing in his ears.
May you like
Dante turned slowly. Sofia was standing five feet away, her little purple crayon clutched to her chest, her large brown eyes looking up at him through the gloom.
***
