Chapter 10 - THE SIEGE OF THE EAST WING
BANG.
The Sig Sauer kicked against my palms.
The nine-millimeter round struck Lucian’s left shoulder, spinning him backward against the massive steel vault door.
The glass vial flew from his fingers, shattering on the concrete in a puddle of clear, deadly oil.
Lucian roared in pain, dropping to one knee, but his right hand was already moving.
He drew a sawed-off shotgun from beneath his waistband.
"LOOK OUT!" Dante bellowed.
Dante didn't raise his weapon.
He threw his entire body across mine, knocking me to the frozen floor as Lucian pulled the trigger.
BOOM.
The heavy blast tore through the air where my chest had been half a second before.
Lead pellets shredded the wooden pallet beside us, raining splinters over my hair.
Dante rolled to his knees, his twelve-gauge barking twice in rapid succession.
BOOM. BOOM.
The heavy slugs tore through Lucian's right hip and thigh.
The sawed-off shotgun flew from Lucian's hand, clattering across the frost-covered floorboards into the dark.
Lucian collapsed on his back against the vault door, gasping, blood pooling beneath his legs.
He was disarmed.
He was broken.
Dante stood up slowly.
He pumped the shotgun, ejecting an empty red plastic hull that clicked sharply against the concrete.
He walked toward his brother.
Each boot step was slow.
Deliberate.
The final march of an executioner.
"Dante," Lucian wheezed, clutching his bleeding hip with both hands.
"We... we have the same blood..."
"Our mother... she wouldn't..."
"Our mother told me to leave you in the river, Lucian," Dante said.
His voice had no anger in it.
It had no grief.
It was the cold, hollow sound of an iron tomb closing forever.
He raised the shotgun, placing the black muzzle directly against the center of Lucian’s forehead.
"Wait."
The voice came from behind us.
Not from me.
From the dark entrance of the warehouse.
Teresa Moretti stood in the shadow of the brine tanks.
She was holding Sophie in her arms, wrapped in the dark mink coat.
My daughter's eyes were wide, but she wasn't crying anymore.
Beside Teresa’s legs stood a massive black shadow.
Limbering.
Snarling softly.
Bruno.
The Cane Corso had a thick white pressure bandage wrapped around his left flank, his fur matted with dried blood, but his amber eyes were burning with ferocious life.
"Bruno!" Sophie cheered, reaching her little hand down toward the dog's scarred head.
Dante didn't lower his shotgun.
"Mother, take the child outside."
"No, Dante," Teresa said, walking forward until she stood five paces from the vault door.
"Lucian doesn't get a quick death from a twelve-gauge."
"That is too merciful for a dog who killed his own blood."
Teresa looked down at her crippled, bleeding son with eyes that had turned to diamond.
"The federal marshals are waiting outside the gate, Dante."
"I called the United States Attorney thirty minutes ago from the car."
"Every document in that vault—the arms manifests, the political bribes, the records of Miguel's murder—is being turned over to the Department of Justice."
Lucian’s eyes bulged in pure, suffocating horror.
"Mother... no..." Lucian choked out.
"A federal penitentiary... they will put me in ADX Florence..."
"They will put you in a concrete box six feet under the Colorado earth, Lucian," Teresa said softly.
"Where you will spend the next forty years remembering the brother you murdered for paper."
Dante looked at his mother.
Then he looked down at his brother.
Slowly, deliberately, Dante lowered the muzzle of the shotgun.
He engaged the safety with a sharp, heavy click.
"The family business ends tonight, Lucian," Dante said.
"The Moretti name is dead."
He turned his back on his brother.
He walked over to where I stood on the frozen concrete.
He reached out his large, scarred hand.
I looked at his palm.
Calloused.
Bloodstained.
The hand of a man who had spent fifteen years living in the shadows of an empire he never chose.
I placed my trembling hand in his.
His fingers closed around mine, warm and solid as an anchor.
"Elena," he murmured, his voice cracking with an emotion he had never allowed himself to show.
"Take the medallion off."
I reached up to my throat.
I unclasped the thin gold chain.
I handed the heavy silver pendant to Dante.
Dante walked to the center of the vault door.
He unscrewed the back of the St. Jude medal, revealing the tiny, raised steel stamp within.
He pressed the stamp directly into the recessed keyhole beneath the roaring lion emblem.
He turned it ninety degrees to the right.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.
The massive twelve-ton steel door shuddered.
The hydraulic seals hissed, releasing sixty years of compressed air.
The vault door swung outward on oiled bearings, revealing shelves lined with leather-bound ledgers, stacks of bearer bonds, and a small, worn wooden recipe box.
On the lid of the recipe box was a piece of masking tape with familiar handwriting:
FOR SOPHIA — WHEN SHE GROWS UP.
Miguel's handwriting.
My knees gave way.
I sank to the concrete floor, pressing the wooden box against my face, weeping tears of pure, unadulterated relief.
The nightmare was over.
The truth was out in the light.
Sophie broke away from Teresa’s arms, running across the cold floor in her little pink sneakers.
She threw her arms around my neck, burying her face into my sweater.
"Mama, look!" Sophie giggled through her tears.
"Bruno is licking your shoe!"
I looked down.
The massive black Cane Corso had collapsed beside my knees, his heavy jowls resting against my wet sneaker, his tail thumping weakly against the concrete floor.
Dante knelt beside us.
His large arm wrapped around both of our shoulders, pulling me and Sophie flush against his chest.
His heart was beating steady, strong, and whole beneath his shirt.
"You're safe now, Elena," Dante whispered into my hair.
May you like
"Both of you."
"Forever."
