Chapter 3 - BLOOD ON THE SNOW
The door exploded inward with a splintering crash.
Dante fired twice through the opening before the door even swung fully ajar. A wet grunt followed, and a body crashed onto the hardwood floor, dark blood pooling into the woven Persian rug.
"Down!" Dante commanded, his voice a low, primal roar that brooked no argument.
I dropped to the floor behind the heavy mahogany side table, my heart hammering like a trapped bird against my ribs. The gunfire downstairs had intensified into a full-blown war zone. Shouts in Italian and English echoed up the grand stairwell, punctuated by the shattering of stained glass and the dull thud of heavy calibers tearing through drywall.
A second assailant moved into the doorway, wearing a black tactical balaclava, rifle raised. Dante lunged, catching the man’s wrist and redirecting the barrel into the ceiling as a burst of deafening rounds tore through the plaster above us. Plaster dust rained down like chalky snow. In a brutal, synchronized sweep, Dante stepped inside the man's guard, buried an elbow into his throat, and used his own momentum to drive him down against the floor. With a sickening snap, the man went limp.
Dante stripped the fallen man’s sidearm, kicked the assault rifle toward me, and scanned the hallway.
"Can you shoot?" he demanded, his breath steady despite the savagery he had just unleashed.
"No!" I cried, coughing against the acrid smell of burnt gunpowder and cordite. "I'm a waitress from Queens, Dante!"
"Safety is off. Point and pull the trigger if someone wearing black comes through that door," he ordered, pulling me to my feet with unrelenting force. "Move. Now. The internal grid was cut from inside the estate. This wasn't an external raid. It's a purge."
He pulled me out into the grand corridor. The hallway was bathed in the eerie red glow of emergency backup lights. Down at the end of the hall, two of Dante’s personal security men lay motionless near the balcony balustrade, executed cleanly with shots to the back of the head.
My breath hitched in horror. "They were your men!"
"They were paid off," Dante ground out, his hand gripping mine like a steel vice as we moved silently toward the service stairs. "Someone offered them more than loyalty."
Suddenly, a shadow stepped out from the intersecting hallway. It was Vincent, Dante’s cousin. He wasn't wearing a mask. He was dressed in his charcoal suit, a silver revolver held loosely at his side, an ugly smirk twisting his features.
"Dante," Vincent purred, stepping forward. "What a terrible tragedy. A rival crew hit the estate on Christmas Eve. Such a shame you and your little bride didn't make it to morning."
"You always were an idiot, Vincent," Dante said, shifting his body to completely shield me from the barrel of Vincent’s gun. "Did Marco promise you Carmine’s territory? You think my brother shares power?"
Vincent’s smirk faltered slightly. "Marco keeps his word. He knows how to reward initiative."
"Marco is using you as meat for the grinder," Dante countered, his voice dripping with venomous ice.
Vincent’s eyes flicked to me, a lecherous gleam returning to his face. "Maybe. But I think I'll keep the girl alive for a few hours. See what made you so desperate to sign your life away."
The insult hadn't even fully left Vincent's mouth when Dante moved.
He didn't draw his gun. He closed the ten-foot distance like a predator launching from the tall grass. Vincent raised the revolver, but Dante's left hand clamped around the cylinder, preventing the hammer from striking. With his right hand, Dante drove a combat blade straight through Vincent’s palm, pinning the weapon and his hand together against the wood paneling of the wall.
Vincent let out an agonizing, high-pitched scream.
Dante leaned in, his face inches from his cousin's. "Tell Marco that when I take his head, I’m going to make him watch me burn everything he loves."
Dante twisted the blade, ripped the revolver free with a savage tug, and struck Vincent across the temple with the heavy butt of the gun. Vincent crumpled to the floor, unconscious and bleeding profusely.
Dante wiped the blade on Vincent's lapel with cold efficiency and turned back to me. His eyes were wild, dilated with adrenaline, but when they settled on my face, the raw violence in them softened by a fraction.
"Are you hit?" he demanded, checking my arms, my shoulders, his hands frantic yet gentle.
"I'm fine... I'm okay," I stammered, though my entire body was trembling violently. The sight of blood, the smell of death—it was an alien nightmare that I had walked into willingly for a pile of paper money.
"We can't stay on this level," Dante said, pulling me toward a hidden service panel behind a massive portrait of an ancestral don. He pressed a recessed lever, and the wood panel clicked open, revealing a narrow, stone-walled spiral staircase leading into the bowels of the estate. "This leads to the old wine cellars and the perimeter tunnels."
We descended into the damp, freezing subterranean tunnels. The noise of gunfire above became muffled, replaced by the rhythmic dripping of water and our own ragged breathing.
After five minutes of winding through the labyrinthine stone corridors, Dante led me into a secure vaulted chamber. Heavy steel blast doors stood open, leading to an underground garage lined with armored vehicles.
"We take the secondary route out to the safehouse in White Plains," Dante muttered, walking toward an armored black sedan. "We regroup, call my loyal captains, and—"
"I wouldn't touch that door handle if I were you, brother."
The smooth, mocking voice came from the shadows near the garage entrance.
Marco stepped forward, flanked by six heavily armed mercenaries dressed in sterile gray combat gear. None of them wore Morelli insignias.
"Marco," Dante said, keeping his gun lowered but primed at his hip. "You broke the family law. You brought outside contractors onto sacred ground."
"Law?" Marco laughed, a sharp, barking sound that bounced off the concrete walls. "Grandfather is upstairs clinging to an oxygen tank, blind to the modern world. The old ways died the day you left for the city to play legitimate businessman, Dante. And now you return with a common, penniless little whore, expecting the syndicate to bow to a sham?"
Marco pulled a thick manila folder from his jacket and tossed it across the concrete. It slid to my feet.
"Did you really think I wouldn't run her name?" Marco sneered, looking at me with undisguised contempt. "Aria Miller. Former art student. Waitress at Bellissimo. Father died of small-cell carcinoma leaving two hundred and forty thousand dollars in medical debt. She's not your wife, Dante. She’s a street beggar you rented for seventy-five grand to steal my birthright."
My breath seized. He knew everything.
Dante didn't flinch. "Her background doesn't matter. The marriage certificate is binding. Touch her, and you wage war against the entire Commission."
"The Commission only cares about stability," Marco said, raising his hand. The six mercenaries raised their rifles, centering their red laser sights directly onto Dante’s chest. "And dead men don't file grievances. But here's the deal, brother. I have a Christmas gift for you."
Marco stepped closer, his gaze drifting lazily toward me.
"Surrender your claim to the seat. Sign the abdication papers right now, and I let you walk away with your life. But the girl stays." Marco smiled, a vile, sickening curl of his lips. "She knows too much about our business now. She belongs to the estate. To me."
Dante’s eyes flared with an infernal fury. "Over my dead body."
"That can be arranged," Marco whispered.
May you like
Suddenly, from the shadows behind Marco’s men, a burst of heavy automatic fire erupted from an overhead ventilation catwalk. Two of the mercenaries dropped instantly, their armor shredded.
"Move!" Dante roared, grabbing my arm and diving behind an armored pillar as the entire garage erupted into a deafening storm of lead and ricochets.
