Chapter 10 - THE STAND AT THE ALTAR
“Take Clara behind the wine casks!” Lorenzo barked.
He drew his Kimber .45 and snatched a tactical carbine from the floor where Marco had dropped spare gear.
Amelia grabbed her sister’s arm, hauling Clara into the narrow alcove behind the three-hundred-gallon oak barrels.
“Stay down, Clara,” Amelia commanded, pulling the borrowed service pistol from her pocket.
“I’m not leaving you,” Clara said, her voice shaking but resolute.
“You won't have to,” Amelia said.
Lorenzo was already ascending the stairs like a hunting wolf.
Amelia followed two steps behind him, keeping low against the curved brick.
They burst into the sacristy just as the heavy wooden doors of the main church splintered inward.
Dozens of armed men in black tactical gear poured through the center aisle, their submachine guns chewing through the carved pews.
Splinters of antique mahogany flew across the nave like shrapnel.
The stained-glass windows of the resurrection shattered, showering the marble floor in multicolored glass.
Leading the assault from the rear of the nave was Victor Moretti.
His right hand was wrapped in a bloody pressure bandage, but his left hand held a gold-plated submachine gun.
“LEAVE NO ONE ALIVE!” Victor screamed through the smoke.
“BURN THE ENTIRE PARISH!”
Lorenzo did not seek cover.
He stepped out onto the raised marble altar platform, directly beneath the massive bronze crucifix.
He leveled the carbine at his shoulder.
He fired three-round bursts with surgical, terrifying precision.
Crack-crack-crack.
The lead three shooters dropped instantly, their bodies tumbling into the broken pews.
Marco and Leo appeared from the side confessionals, their shotguns roaring in synchronized thunder.
BOOM. BOOM.
The crossfire tore through the center aisle, pinning Moretti’s men behind the stone pillars.
Amelia knelt beside the communion rail.
She rested her pistol on the wrought-iron balustrade.
Her hands were completely steady now.
She tracked a mercenary attempting to flank Lorenzo from the choir stairs.
She squeezed the trigger twice.
BANG. BANG.
The shooter took two rounds to the chest, falling backward over the rail onto the marble steps below.
Lorenzo glanced at her over his shoulder.
A fierce, proud light flared in his amber eyes.
“Nice shooting, Mrs. Bianchi,” he murmured over the din of gunfire.
“I haven't married you yet, Mr. Bianchi,” she called back, ejecting an empty casing.
“You will,” he promised, his voice carrying the certainty of an iron decree.
“Tomorrow morning.”
Victor Moretti saw that his men were being systematically eliminated.
The panic in the old man's face turned to raw, psychotic fury.
He dropped his gold submachine gun.
He reached into his heavy cashmere coat and pulled out an unpinned phosphorus grenade.
“IF I DON'T OWN THIS CITY, NOBODY DOES!” Victor shrieked.
He drew back his arm to hurl the chemical fire directly at the communion rail where Amelia stood.
Lorenzo moved.
He did not raise his gun.
He dropped the carbine, lunged across the altar steps, and launched his entire six-foot-four body through the air like a guided missile.
He collided with Victor Moretti in the center aisle, five feet before the grenade could leave the old man's fingers.
Both men crashed onto the marble floor in a violent tangle of limbs and shattered glass.
The phosphorus grenade slipped from Victor’s grasp, rolling toward the empty baptismal font.
WHOOSH.
A pillar of blinding white chemical flame erupted, incinerating the marble font and sending three-thousand-degree heat licking across the ceiling timbers.
Lorenzo pinned Victor to the stone floor with his left knee.
His right hand seized Victor’s throat in an unbreakable iron vise.
Victor clawed frantically at Lorenzo’s wrist, his face turning purple, his breath whistling through his crushed windpipe.
“You burned my wife, Victor,” Lorenzo whispered.
His voice was so low, so terrifyingly calm, it silenced the roaring fire behind them.
“You stole her sister.”
“You threatened my blood.”
Victor’s eyes bulged, staring into the face of his executioner.
“Bianchi... please...” Victor wheezed.
“The commission... will declare war...”
“There is no commission left, Victor,” Lorenzo said softly.
“I bought your captains three hours ago while you were playing with matches at the docks.”
Lorenzo drew his nine-inch combat blade from his boot.
He did not strike the throat.
He pressed the flat edge of the blade against the silver-and-gold signet ring on Victor’s pinky finger.
With one sharp, brutal twist of his wrist, he severed the ring from the bone.
Victor shrieked in agony, curling into a ball on the bloody marble.
Lorenzo picked up the severed signet ring.
He tossed it over his shoulder into the raging phosphorus fire.
The gold melted into slag in two seconds.
“Marco,” Lorenzo commanded, standing up to his full, towering height.
“Take this garbage to the federal prosecutor's office.”
“Deliver him to Agent Vance with the original Brooks ledgers.”
“Let him spend the rest of his miserable life dying in a federal prison cell.”
Marco stepped forward with heavy zip-ties.
“With pleasure, Boss.”
Lorenzo turned his back on the wreckage.
He walked up the marble steps to where Amelia stood beside the altar.
The fire from the font cast warm, dancing amber light across her face.
He reached out.
His large, calloused hand gently took hers, pulling her flush against his chest.
Amelia rested her forehead against his collarbone, her eyes closing as the nightmare of the last fourteen days finally dissolved into the smoke.
“Is it over, Enzo?” she whispered.
Lorenzo looked at the shattered church doors.
Outside, the snowstorm was beginning to clear.
The first pale, rose-colored light of dawn was breaking over the Chicago skyline.
May you like
“It is over, Amelia,” Lorenzo murmured, his lips brushing her temple.
“Now we go home.”
