CHAPTER 5
Chapter 5
Julian immediately shoved Emma and Lily behind the heavy steel desk just as the first spray of automatic gunfire shredded the corrugated walls. Metal screamed, concrete splintered in violent white puffs, and the smell of cordite instantly obliterated the scent of rust and rain.
Dante dropped to one knee, drawing his weapon and firing three deliberate, suppressed rounds through the gaps in the sheet metal outside. A man screamed in the darkness, followed by the heavy thud of a body dropping into the wet gravel.
“Julian, take the child and Emma through the rear maintenance hatch behind that wooden panel!” Dante commanded, his voice steady amid the deafening thunder of gunfire. “There is an old coal chute leading directly down to the river slipway!”
“I’m not leaving you behind to fight twenty men alone, boss,” Julian fired back, emptying his magazine toward the headlights and shattering both high beams. “We fight our way back to the Suburban together or we don’t leave this yard at all!”
“If they get Lily, nothing we do matters!” Dante barked, shoving another fresh magazine into his pistol with practiced, mechanical speed. “They want the drive and they want the witnesses dead! Move them now, Julian! That is an executive order!”
Lily suddenly reached out from beneath the desk, her little fingers catching Dante’s wet wool sleeve just as he prepared to turn the corner. Her eyes were wide with fright, but she didn’t cry; she simply held up her one-eyed stuffed rabbit toward him.
“Take Barnaby, Mr. Dante,” she whispered through the roar of bullets punching through metal overhead. “He’s really brave when the thunder gets loud. He’ll make sure the bad men don’t hit your big muscles.”
Dante stared at the ragged, juice-stained toy, something cracking wide open inside his chest that years of syndicate violence had kept locked away. He took the rabbit, shoved it securely inside his inner coat pocket next to his heart, and looked into her eyes.
“I’ll keep Barnaby safe, Lily,” Dante said softly, his voice warmer than anyone had ever heard it. “Now go with Julian. When you get to the boat, wait for me. I promised you that you were safe, and I never break my word.”
Emma grabbed Lily, tears streaming down her pale cheeks as Julian kicked open the rotting wooden panel covering the low chute. “Dante, please... don't die for us,” Emma whispered desperately, her voice breaking against the howling wind.
“I’m not dying for you, Emma,” Dante replied, his eyes turning back toward the dark yard with lethal focus. “I’m killing for you. There is a very big difference. Now run before Marcus brings the heavy rifles around the perimeter.”
Julian hauled Emma and the girl into the black void of the chute just as a grenade detonated outside the locker entrance. The concussive blast blew the metal doors inward, showering the interior with sparks, burning debris, and choking black smoke.
Dante rolled behind a concrete pillar, his ears ringing from the detonation, but his hands remained as steady as steel vices. Through the swirling gray smoke, he saw three armed mercenaries in tactical gear advancing slowly, their weapon lights cutting through the darkness.
He rose from the shadows like an avenging ghost, firing three double-taps that dropped the lead two gunners before they could swing their barrels. The third man panicked, spraying blindly toward the ceiling, but Dante closed the distance, disarming him with brutal efficiency.
He stepped over the fallen men and out into the torrential rain, the water plastering his dark hair across his forehead. Across the muddy yard, standing behind the armored door of an SUV, Marcus Vance stood clutching a smoking submachine gun.
“You always were too sentimental about the help, Dante!” Marcus yelled over the roar of the downpour, his scar gleaming pale in the moonlight. “Your father understood that people are just numbers on a balance sheet! You let a maid ruin an empire!”
“My father died an old, paranoid coward who trusted snakes like you,” Dante called back, walking steadily forward through the mud without breaking stride. “You stole from our family, you murdered an innocent man, and you threatened a five-year-old child under my roof.”
“That child has ledgers that could put me away for three lifetimes!” Marcus sneered, leveling his weapon directly at Dante’s chest. “Do you really think a court cares who owns the bullet that ends this? You’re just another body in the docks tonight!”
Marcus pulled the trigger, but Dante dove behind an abandoned iron anchor winch, the rounds pinging harmlessly off the solid cast iron. From the river slipway below, the sudden roar of a high-powered twin-diesel marine engine split the night air like thunder.
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Julian had secured the harbor patrol interceptor craft that Dante kept docked at the pier for emergency evacuations. The massive searchlight on the vessel snapped on, bathing Marcus and his surviving two men in blinding white illumination from the water.
—END OF Chapter 5,
