Chapter 6 - THE RED HOOK VAULT
The heat hit the bottom of the elevator cage like an open furnace.
Black smoke billowed through the floor grating, choking our lungs.
Sophie buried her face into my chest, coughing violently.
"Dante!" I screamed, pulling my sweater over her nose.
"Hold on to the handrail!" he yelled.
Dante didn't wait for the cage to reach the bottom.
He kicked open the emergency service hatch in the side of the brass cage.
Ten feet below us, the concrete floor of the wine cellar was clear of the flames, though dense smoke was already crawling along the ceiling.
Dante dropped through the opening first.
He hit the concrete in a roll, popping to his feet instantly.
He reached up with both arms.
"Drop her to me, Elena!"
I lowered Sophie through the hatch.
Her small sneakers dangled into the smoke until Dante’s massive hands caught her waist.
He set her down behind a stack of oak wine barrels.
"Now you!" he barked.
I swung my legs through the iron opening.
My fingers slipped on the greasy metal.
I fell.
Dante caught me against his chest, his arms absorbing the shock of my weight.
For half a second, his face was inches from mine.
His cheek was streaked with soot and blood.
His dark eyes were wild, fierce, and entirely focused on my survival.
"Are you broken?" he asked, his voice rough.
"No," I panted.
"Then we run."
He grabbed Sophie with one arm and locked his other hand around my wrist.
We sprinted through the subterranean wine cellar, dodging wooden crates of vintage Chianti.
At the far end of the cellar stood a heavy steel blast door.
A fallout shelter built during the Cold War by Dante’s grandfather.
Dante punched a six-digit code into the mechanical keypad.
The heavy steel pins retracted with a dull, heavy thunk.
He shoved us through into an underground garage that sloped upward toward the estate’s private boat slip on the Long Island Sound.
Parked inside the concrete bunker sat an armored black Suburban.
No license plates.
Ballistic glass two inches thick.
Beside the vehicle stood Teresa Moretti.
Dante’s mother.
She was seventy years old, wrapped in a dark mink coat over her silk pajamas, holding a small silver revolver in her wrinkled, steady hand.
She didn't look surprised to see us.
She didn't look frightened.
She looked like a queen whose palace was under siege.
"You took your time, Dante," Teresa said.
Her voice was as crisp as winter frost.
"Lucian is alive, Mother," Dante said, throwing the rear door of the SUV open.
"Get in."
Teresa’s eyes flickered toward me.
Then down to Sophie, who was clutching her star-shaped pillow with white knuckles.
"I know he's alive," the old woman whispered softly.
Dante froze with his hand on the driver's door.
He turned slowly.
The air in the concrete bunker dropped ten degrees.
"What did you say?" Dante growled.
Teresa climbed into the front passenger seat with slow, aristocratic dignity.
"I said I know, Dante."
"I have known for three years."
"Who do you think brought Elena and the child to our estate?"
I stepped back, pulling Sophie behind my legs.
My skin prickled with ice.
"You brought me here?" I gasped.
"You told me it was charity!"
"You told me you felt sorry for Miguel's widow!"
Teresa looked through the open window at me.
Her dark eyes held no malice, only the crushing weight of a matriarch who had spent fifty years calculating survival in a pit of vipers.
"There is no charity in this family, Elena," Teresa said.
"Miguel gave me the vault code before he went to that bakery."
"He told me that if anything happened to him, his daughter was the only legitimate heir to the Red Hook maritime trust."
"Not Dante."
"Not Lucian."
Teresa pointed a frail, manicured finger at Sophie.
"That little girl owns forty percent of the Port of New York."
"And Lucian needs her signature to sell it to the Russian syndicate."
Behind us, the steel blast door groaned.
The sound of an oxyacetylene cutting torch began to hiss against the reinforced steel.
A bright orange line of molten slag bloomed across the perimeter of the door.
Dante grabbed my arm, shoving me and Sophie into the rear leather seat.
"Lock the doors," Dante commanded.
He vaulted into the driver's seat.
He slammed his foot onto the push-button ignition.
The six-liter engine roared to life with a deep, guttural growl that shook the concrete walls.
"Hold on," Dante said.
He shoved the transmission into drive.
May you like
He didn't wait for the garage door to open.
He floored the accelerator straight through the reinforced corrugated steel shutters into the raging black waters of the storm.
