Chapter 11 - The Blood Red Hand
The room began to spin.
The crystal chandeliers blurred into streaks of sickening gold.
"LEO!" The scream tore from my throat, raw and deafening.
Guests around us gashed in horror, champagne glasses dropping and shattering
across the polished stone floor.
I lunged at Salvatore Vance, my fingernails aiming for his eyes.
Vance’s security guards moved to draw their weapons, but Lorenzo was faster.
Lorenzo didn't draw a gun.
He grabbed Salvatore by the throat with his uninjured right hand, lifted the
grown man completely off his feet, and slammed him violently onto the glass
display case of an Egyptian sarcophagus.
The reinforced glass cracked with a deafening shatter.
"DANTE!" Lorenzo roared, his voice shaking the ancient temple walls.
"LOCK DOWN THE ESTATE!"
Dante had his satellite phone already pressed to his ear.
His face was as pale as snow.
"Boss... the line to the Hudson compound is dead. Full jamming frequency
detected."
Salvatore choked beneath Lorenzo’s iron grip, blood trickling from the corner of
his mouth, but he was laughing.
A wet, psychotic cackle bubbled from his throat.
"Too late, Moretti!" Vance wheezed.
"Captain Thomas... your beloved head of perimeter defense... took five million
in bearer bonds three days ago."
"He turned off the automated turrets. He opened the south wall."
"My hit team is inside the house right now."
Lorenzo’s eyes flared with a demonic, terrifying fury.
He pulled Salvatore Vance forward and slammed his forehead directly into Vance’s
nose.
Bone shattered.
Vance screamed in agony, collapsing to the floor in a heap of blood and white
silk.
Chaos exploded inside the Metropolitan Museum.
Sirens began wailing outside.
Socialites screamed, trampling each other to reach the exits as Vance’s guards
drew their suppressed pistols.
CRACK! CRACK!
Dante and Lorenzo’s operatives opened fire immediately, dropping Vance’s three
lead guards before they could raise their barrels.
Muzzle flashes illuminated the ancient sandstone statues.
"Clara! Move!" Lorenzo roared, grabbing my wrist and pulling me toward the
private service exit behind the Temple of Dendur.
We burst through the metal fire door into the back alley.
The rain had returned, colder and harder than before.
Our black Escalades were already idling, tires smoking against the asphalt.
"Get her inside!" Lorenzo ordered Dante, shoving me toward the rear door.
"Lorenzo, NO!" I screamed, pulling backward with all my strength.
"I am not getting in that car without you! We're going to my son! WE'RE GOING TO
LEO!"
Lorenzo stopped.
Rain poured down his face, soaking his black velvet tuxedo.
The scar over his eyebrow pulled tight as he looked into my eyes.
He saw the maternal fire burning in my soul—a fire that no bullet, no mob boss,
and no army could ever extinguish.
"Get in the front," Lorenzo told me, his voice deadly and focused.
"We take the helicopter from the West 30th Street heliport. We have twelve
minutes."
We scrambled into the vehicle.
The Escalade tore through Central Park, blowing past police barricades and
civilian traffic at over one hundred miles per hour.
Sirens chased us, but Lorenzo’s radio team was already overriding city dispatch
frequencies.
Four minutes later, we screeched onto the Hudson River heliport.
A twin-engine Sikorsky S-76 was already spooling up its rotors, the massive
blades whipping the rain into a hurricane of mist.
We ran across the tarmac, ducking beneath the spinning blades.
Lorenzo threw me into the cabin, jumping in behind me and sliding the heavy door
shut.
The helicopter lifted off instantly, banking hard over the black, churning
waters of the Hudson River.
Inside the cabin, Dante tossed two tactical plate carriers onto the floor.
He handed Lorenzo a modified M4 carbine with a holographic sight.
Then, Dante looked at me.
He pulled a sleek, compact Glock 19 from his holster and held it out toward my
trembling hands.
"Do you know how to shoot, Clara?" Dante asked.
"My father was a marine," I breathed, my fingers wrapping around the cold
checkered grip.
The weight felt familiar, heavy, and dangerous.
I racked the slide back, checking the chamber with a crisp, practiced motion.
"He taught me when I was fourteen."
Lorenzo strapped his tactical vest over his stitched chest, wincing as the
kevlar pulled against his torn artery, but not a single groan escaped his lips.
He looked across the cabin at me.
In my emerald dress, covered in rain, holding a combat pistol with knuckles of
iron, I was no longer the fragile woman who served soup in Tribeca.
"If anything happens to Leo..." I whispered, my voice shaking with an ocean of
rage.
"Nothing happens to him," Lorenzo swore, his storm-gray eyes locking onto mine
like twin gun barrels.
"Because tonight, we leave no survivors."
The pilot’s voice crackled through our headsets:
“Two minutes out from the Hudson compound! Visual confirmed! Southern wing is on
fire! We have active tracer fire across the courtyard!”
Lorenzo unlatched the heavy side door of the helicopter.
Freezing wind and rain roared into the cabin.
Below us, through the storm clouds, the Moretti fortress burned.
Tracer rounds streaked across the dark sky like red lightning.
Black smoke poured from the second-floor windows—the exact floor where Leo’s
recovery suite was located.
"Leo..." I whispered, my heart tearing in two.
Lorenzo clipped his harness to the rappel rope.
He looked back at me, reaching out to cup my neck in his massive, blood-stained
hand.
"Stay behind Dante," Lorenzo commanded softly.
May you like
"I am going to bring your boy back to you, Clara. Even if I have to walk through
the gates of hell to get him."
