Chapter 7 - The Ambush at Valley Street
"Down!" Dante roared.
He grabbed Karen by the collar of her heavy coat, dragging her violently to the concrete floor just as a hail of high-caliber bullets punched through the corrugated steel door of the storage unit.
The noise was deafening—a terrifying, metallic roar of shredding aluminum, shattering wood, and splintering porcelain. The cardboard boxes above their heads exploded into plumes of shredded paper and down feathers from Faye’s old pillows.
Karen screamed, pressing her face against the dusty floor, her arms wrapped tightly around her head.
Dante was already on his stomach, his semi-automatic pistol drawn and leveled at the doorway. He didn't panic. His breathing remained rhythmic, his eyes narrowed into cold, calculating slits. He fired three rapid shots through the shredded opening of the door.
A wet grunt and the heavy clatter of a body hitting the corridor floor told Karen he hadn't missed.
"Karen," Dante shouted over the ringing in her ears. "Can you crawl?"
"Yes! Yes!" she gasped, coughing on the thick cloud of plaster and cardboard dust filling the tiny room.
"Get behind that cast-iron radiator in the back corner. Don't lift your head. No matter what happens, do not move!"
Another burst of gunfire ripped across the ceiling, sending showers of hot concrete chips raining down on them. Dante rolled onto his back, ejected his empty magazine, slammed a fresh one home with the heel of his palm, and pulled a small, heavy smoke canister from his interior pocket.
He pulled the pin with his teeth and hurled it through the doorway into the hallway.
A thick, blinding cloud of white chemical smoke instantly erupted outside, hissing violently as it filled the corridor, cutting visibility to zero. Coughing and shouting erupted in the hallway in heavy, thick Boston accents.
"He’s in forty-two! Flank the corridor! Don't let the girl leave!"
Dante surged to his feet with terrifying speed, lunging into the doorway like a demon stepping through mist. Karen watched from behind the rusted radiator, paralyzed with terror and awe, as the man who had bought her mother’s care became an unstoppable engine of destruction.
Two muzzle flashes strobed through the dense white smoke. Dante fired with mechanical precision—two shots, a pause, two more shots. Screams echoed off the brick walls, followed by the sickening thud of men collapsing against the concrete.
"Clear!" Dante’s voice cut through the haze. He appeared in the doorway of the unit, his face smudged with soot, a crimson streak bleeding across his left cheek where a ricocheted bullet fragment had grazed his skin.
He reached down, grabbing Karen’s arm and hauling her to her feet with one powerful motion.
"We move now," he commanded.
He shoved the porcelain carousel fragments and the thumb drive into his coat, keeping his body positioned between Karen and the hallway as he guided her through the smoke.
The corridor was a nightmare. Two men in black tactical jackets lay motionless in pools of dark blood on the linoleum. The chemical smoke was so thick it burned Karen’s eyes and throat, but Dante’s grip on her arm was an unbreakable steel band, dragging her forward through the gloom.
They reached the service door, bursting out into the freezing night air.
The alleyway was in chaos. One of Dante’s escort SUVs was burning, its front windshield shattered, while Leo and two other men were exchanging heavy fire with a black Dodge Ram truck blocking the far end of the alley.
"Boss!" Leo yelled, firing around the corner of a brick dumpster. "They cut the street off! We’re pinned!"
Dante didn't hesitate. He looked at the narrow space between the storage building and an adjacent textile factory—a dark, three-foot-wide service alley filled with frozen trash bags and chain-link fencing.
"Karen," Dante said, turning her to face him, his hands gripping her shoulders. His eyes were blazing with a terrifying intensity. "Listen to me. You take this."
He pulled the silver thumb drive from his pocket and shoved it into the zippered interior pocket of her coat.
"Dante, no!" she cried, grabbing his lapels, her bandaged knuckles turning white against the black wool. "I’m not leaving you!"
"You run down that cut," Dante ordered, his voice brooking no argument, raw with protective fury. "It leads out to the railway tracks on Promenade Street. Walk east for three blocks. Go into the back kitchen of the diner on Dean Street. Ask for a man named Sal. Tell him Dante Marchetti sent you."
"I won't leave you to die!" Karen yelled, tears cutting through the soot on her cheeks. "You came here for my sister! You saved my mother! I am not letting them kill you for a ledger!"
Dante looked at her, stunned for a fraction of a second by the fierce, unyielding defiance in her tear-stained eyes. A dark, crooked smile touched the corner of his lips.
"They aren't going to kill me, little bird," Dante whispered.
He leaned down and pressed a hard, fierce kiss to her forehead.
"Now run."
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Before she could scream, Dante turned, leveled his weapon toward the Dodge Ram, and charged straight into the gunfire, drawing every muzzle flash in the alleyway away from her.
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