Chapter 6 - THE matriarch'S RETREAT
Dante moved with savage, unthinking speed.
He caught the mercenary's gun barrel with his left hand, forcing it upward.
A burst of automatic fire chewed harmlessly into the storm clouds.
With his right hand, Dante drove the iron fire poker into the man's throat.
The operative collapsed backward over the railing, tumbling forty feet to the concrete courtyard below.
"Over the roof!" Dante yelled, dragging Isabella toward the maintenance ladder.
"Marco, cover the ladder!"
"Go!" Marco roared, firing his remaining rounds down the terrace stairs.
Isabella grabbed the freezing iron rungs.
The metal bit into her raw palms.
She climbed into the howling dark, rain whipping her eyes shut.
Dante was right behind her, his boots thudding against the rungs like thunder.
They scrambled onto the flat gravel roof of the main house.
Below them, the estate was a circle of burning vehicles and flashing gunfire.
Dante pulled out his private satellite phone and punched three buttons.
"Bravo team," he spoke into the wind.
"Extraction at the helipad on the north ridge."
"Deploy heavy suppressive fire on the south courtyard."
"Burn the gate."
Within forty seconds, a deafening whir of twin turbine blades cut through the thunder.
A sleek black Sikorsky helicopter cleared the tree line, its high-powered searchlight blinding the mercenaries on the lawn.
Two door-mounted miniguns roared to life.
A storm of tracer rounds chewed the three black SUVs into smoking metal ribbons.
Carlo's men scattered like ants into the dark woods.
The helicopter hovered four feet above the gravel roof.
Marco appeared from the access door, blood dripping from his shoulder.
He grabbed Isabella and hauled her into the cabin.
Dante jumped in last, sliding the heavy door shut as the helicopter banked hard over the burning estate.
The silence inside the pressurized cabin was sudden and heavy.
Isabella sat on the bench, wrapping her arms around her knees.
Her silk clothes were ruined, plastered to her skin with mud and blood.
Dante knelt in front of her.
He reached out to touch her wet hair.
She pulled her head back.
Dante's hands dropped.
His face was haggard, lines of deep exhaustion carved into his forehead.
"Isabella," he whispered.
"You brought me into this," she said.
Her voice was trembling, but her eyes were cold stone.
"You swore to me that your business would never cross the threshold of my apartment."
"You swore your family was civilized."
"I was wrong," Dante said.
The confession cost him dearly.
His shoulders sagged under the weight of his guilt.
"I thought I had them under control."
"You let Carlo humiliate me because you were afraid of looking weak," she spat.
"You hesitated."
"In that salon, you looked at your aunts and cousins before you looked at me."
"I was trying to buy time to find the thief," Dante pleaded.
"You were trying to keep your crown clean," she countered.
"And you let me bleed for it."
Marco stepped forward from the cockpit divider, holding a secure tablet.
"Boss," Marco said quietly.
"We intercepted a call from the North Ridge estate."
"Your mother is on line one."
Dante took the tablet with a grim nod.
He put it on speaker.
Katarina Moretti's voice filled the cabin.
She was not crying.
She sounded as calm and detached as if she were ordering morning pastry.
"Dante," his mother said.
"Mother," Dante replied, his voice dropping into dangerous gravel.
"Where are you?"
"I am at the safehouse in Oak Brook," Katarina said.
"With Sophia."
"Did you know what Carlo was planning?"
A long, suffocating pause stretched across the satellite connection.
"I knew Carlo had debts," Katarina said softly.
"I knew he needed collateral to satisfy the Petrov family."
Dante stood up in the shaking cabin, his knuckles turning white on the handrail.
"You let him frame Isabella?" Dante roared.
"I told him to handle it quietly," his mother replied without apology.
"Isabella is an outsider, Dante."
"She made you soft."
"She made you refuse the merger with the Detroit syndicate."
"A Don cannot rule with a soft heart."
"You sold my wife out for a Russian treaty?" Dante’s voice cracked with pure, unadulterated rage.
"She wasn't your wife yet," Katarina said coldly.
"And now she never will be."
"Because the real Star of Palermo is already in Detroit."
Isabella leaned forward toward the tablet.
"Your mother is wrong," Isabella said clearly into the microphone.
The line went dead quiet on the other end.
"Who is that?" Katarina demanded.
May you like
"The woman who knows you've been played for fools," Isabella replied.
"The real sapphire never left Chicago."
