Chapter 5 - THE FIRE IN THE GALLERY
The silhouette in the doorway was tall and crooked.
The firelight caught the side of his face.
My breath trapped in my throat.
Half of the man's face was handsome—the sharp Moretti jawline, the dark hair, the aristocratic nose.
The other half was a nightmare of purple keloid scar tissue and melted skin.
His left ear was gone, replaced by a jagged hole.
His left eye was milky, blind, and permanently wide.
He wore a dark tactical coat, unbuttoned, over a bloodstained white shirt.
In his right hand, he held a heavy twelve-gauge shotgun.
Behind him in the corridor, two armed men in gray windbreakers stood with submachine guns at the low-ready position.
"You look well, Dante," Lucian rasped.
The scarred half of his mouth pulled upward into a grotesque parody of a smile.
"Running my docks."
"Sleeping under my chandeliers."
"Taking in my dead cousin's widow like a charitable saint."
Dante didn't raise his voice.
He didn't take cover.
He stood in the center of the room, his submachine gun lowered slightly, his finger resting lightly on the trigger guard.
"You killed Miguel," Dante said.
"Miguel stole what belonged to me," Lucian hissed.
He stepped across the threshold, his heavy boots leaving bloody prints on the Persian rug.
"He took the Red Hook ledger."
"He took fifty million dollars in bearer bonds that our father left in that Red Hook vault."
"He gave you the codes, Dante!"
"He made you the king, and he left me to burn in that sedan!"
"Miguel didn't put you in that car, Lucian," Dante said softly.
"You set that bomb yourself."
Lucian’s milky eye twitched.
"You faked your death to escape the federal indictments in New Jersey," Dante continued, taking half a step forward.
"You let our mother weep over an empty coffin."
"You let the Commission hunt Miguel because you knew his face was similar enough to pass for yours in the morgue photos."
"He was an accountant!" Lucian screamed, his voice cracking into high-pitched hysteria.
"He was soft!"
"He didn't deserve that bloodline!"
Lucian pointed the shotgun directly at the bed where Sophie was hiding beneath the blankets.
Bruno bared his fangs, his chest rumbling like distant thunder.
"Give me the medallion, Dante."
"Give me the code on her neck, or I blow that bed into kindling."
I didn't think.
I didn't calculate the odds.
The fear that had kept me invisible for three years vanished beneath a wave of pure, maternal rage.
I reached into the open desk drawer beside my hip.
My fingers brushed the cold steel of a heavy silver paperweight shaped like a ship's anchor.
Two pounds of solid brass.
I leaped from behind the desk.
I hurled the brass anchor with all the strength in my body straight at Lucian’s scarred face.
CRACK.
The metal struck him directly across his ruined left eye socket.
Lucian screamed in agony, stumbling backward into the doorframe.
The shotgun discharged into the ceiling.
BOOM.
Plaster and oak lath rained down in a blinding cloud of white dust.
"FIRE!" Dante roared.
Dante’s submachine gun barked in a devastating, three-round burst.
The two shooters behind Lucian were thrown backward into the gallery, their bodies collapsing against the marble balustrade.
Bruno leaped from the bed like a black missile.
The ninety-pound Cane Corso hit Lucian’s chest at full speed, tackling the scarred man out into the corridor.
The sound of tearing cloth and guttural shrieks echoed down the hallway.
Dante grabbed my arm, yanking me toward the bed.
He scooped Sophie up in his other arm, tossing her over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
"The private lift," Dante shouted over the din.
"Move!"
We sprinted through the smoking bedroom toward the private dressing room in the back.
Behind us, Lucian fired a secondary pistol into the floor.
A sharp yelp tore from Bruno's throat.
"BRUNO!" Sophie wailed, reaching her little hands toward the open door.
"He's hit! Mama, Bruno is hit!"
My heart broke, but Dante didn't stop.
He kicked open the concealed door inside the wardrobe.
A small, brass-caged elevator sat waiting in the dark shaft.
Dante shoved me inside, thrust Sophie into my arms, and hit the bottom toggle with his elbow.
The iron gates slammed shut.
The cables groaned.
The elevator began to descend into the floorboards just as Lucian dragged himself into the dressing room.
His face was covered in blood where my brass anchor had split his scar tissue.
In his hand, he held a smoking flare gun.
He raised it toward the descending cage.
"YOU CAN'T HIDE HER FOREVER, DANTE!" Lucian shrieked down the shaft.
He pulled the trigger.
The magnesium flare arced down the shaft, ricocheting off the iron cage, and plunged into the open grease pit beneath the car.
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WHOOSH.
A blinding wall of red fire erupted from the basement below us.
