Chapter 5 - When the Shadows Strike
Adrian gagged, his polished Oxford shoes kicking uselessly against the mahogany bar as Dante’s grip crushed his windpipe.
His face turned a mottled purple, his fingers clawing desperately at Dante’s wrists, but Dante’s arms were like solid granite.
"Dante!" Clara cried out from the armchair, covering Isla’s eyes with both hands. "Don't do this in front of her! Please!"
The little girl’s muffled sobs pierced through the red haze of fury clouding Dante’s mind.
For six years, Dante had lived for the moment he would wrap his hands around the neck of Isabella’s killer.
He had envisioned torture chambers in the harbor basements, slow dismemberment, and unmarked graves in the Jersey marshes.
Yet as he looked over his shoulder and saw Isla trembling against Clara’s torn apron, something inside his chest cracked wide open.
He did not want his daughter’s first memory of her father to be the sound of cartilage snapping in his fist.
Dante threw Adrian violently across the suite.
The lawyer crashed against the heavy glass coffee table, shattering the crystal centerpiece and skidding across the rug, coughing blood onto the wool.
"Victor," Dante commanded, his voice shaking with restrained slaughter. "Cuff him. Put him in the panic room below the cellar. If he dies before I question him, I will take your badge and your life."
"Understood, Boss," Victor responded, moving forward with plastic zip-ties drawn from his tactical vest.
Before Victor could reach the fallen lawyer, the heavy reinforced glass window behind Dante shattered inward with an ear-splitting roar.
A high-caliber sniper round tore through the triple-pane ballistic glass, creating a spiderweb of frosted cracks and whistling past Dante’s ear.
The bullet struck the mahogany bar, exploding the Scotch bottle into a thousand amber shards.
"Down!" Victor bellowed, diving toward the center of the room and tackling Dante to the carpet as a second round punched through the ceiling plaster.
Clara screamed, throwing her body over Isla in the armchair, tucking the child beneath her chest like a mother bird shielding her chick from hail.
Red laser dots swept across the room through the fractured glass, searching for targets through the billowing curtains.
Adrian, bleeding from his nose and lip, rolled frantically toward the private terrace service door that led to the maintenance stairs.
"He called a cleanup crew before he got in the lift!" Victor shouted over the deafening cracks of suppressed gunfire hitting the outer brickwork.
Dante rolled onto his feet behind the heavy marble pillar, his eyes blazing with an unholy fire.
He didn't look at Adrian escaping through the service door.
He looked across the room at the armchair where Clara was taking the impact of falling plaster on her bare shoulders to keep Isla safe.
A sniper round punched clean through the leather backrest of the chair, six inches above Clara’s head.
Isla was screaming, a high-pitched, terrified shriek that shattered Dante’s soul more violently than any bullet ever could.
"Victor, cover the east window!" Dante roared, drawing a concealed ceramic automatic from the ankle holster inside his boot.
Victor leaned around the corner of the bar, firing three rapid, rhythmic shots through the fractured window toward the opposite rooftop three hundred yards away.
A figure on the far parapet dropped from sight, the muzzle flashes abruptly ceasing.
Dante didn't wait for the secondary shooters to adjust their sights.
He sprinted across the open space of the suite, completely ignoring the red laser dots dancing across his white linen shirt.
He threw his broad frame over both Clara and Isla, wrapping his long arms around the mother and daughter, turning his own back into a human shield against the window.
Two rounds struck the reinforced steel backing of the leather chair right behind Dante’s shoulder blades, the kinetic shockwave slamming through his spine.
Dante grunted, his teeth grinding together in agony, but his grip around the trembling child never slipped an inch.
"I've got you," Dante whispered into Isla's hair, his voice rough and cracked with an emotion he hadn't felt in six years. "I've got you, little bird. Daddy's here."
Isla’s small, tear-stained hands reached out from beneath Clara’s chest and gripped the lapels of Dante’s shirt, clinging to him with instinctive, desperate strength.
Through the shattered window, the distant sirens of the NYPD began to wail across midtown Manhattan, mingling with the screech of burning tires in the alley below.
Adrian had escaped into the concrete labyrinth of the city, and with him went the codes to Dante’s offshore accounts and the identities of half the syndicate's safehouses.
A full-scale war had just been declared in the heart of New York City.
Dante lifted his head, his white shirt stained with Clara’s tears and his own blood from a grazing shard of glass on his cheek.
He looked down at the pale, exhausted woman who had defied an entire mafia empire for six years just to keep his daughter breathing.
"Victor," Dante spoke through the smoke and settling dust, his voice terrifyingly calm.
"Sir?" Victor called out from behind the bar, reloading a fresh magazine into his sidearm.
"Call the private surgical team at Columbia Presbyterian," Dante ordered, his eyes never leaving Isla’s small, rhythmic chest. "Tell them Dr. Bennett is supervising the operating theater tonight. And tell Marcus to lock down every bridge, tunnel, and private airstrip in this state."
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Dante gently smoothed the crooked ivory bow in Isla’s chestnut curls, his thumb wiping a smudge of soot from her cheek.
"The king is not dead," Dante whispered into the cold Manhattan night. "And God help anyone who tries to take what is mine again."
