Chương 6 - Blood on the Marble
"I’m not hit," I gasped, the cold rain plastering my hair to my forehead, my breath coming in ragged, painful shudders. "It’s not my blood."
Alessandro’s thumbs wiped away a smear of crimson from my cheekbone with an intensity that bordered on violence. His slate eyes were black in the storm light, dilated with pure, primal fury.
"Ethan!" he roared over the howling wind and the wail of the sirens.
Ethan appeared at the shattered window frame, an assault rifle slung across his chest, his face streaked with cordite. "The front drive is secured, Boss. Bellini’s primary assault team was cut down at the gatehouse. But Calderone brought twelve men through the lake trail. They’re inside the lower terrace."
"Get Matteo and Elena into the panic room beneath the wine cellar," Alessandro commanded, his voice dropping into that chilling, lethal cadence. "Lock the steel doors from the inside. Do not open them for anyone. Not even me."
"Alessandro—" Matteo’s voice echoed from the hallway, frantic, terrified.
"Go with Ethan, Matteo!" Alessandro barked without looking back. "Now!"
Matteo hesitated, then the sound of Ethan dragging him down the corridor faded beneath the steady *thump-thump-thump* of automatic fire echoing from the floor below.
Alessandro turned back to me. He reached down, took the bloody letter opener from my frozen fingers, and tossed it aside. Then, with a single, fluid movement, he caught me beneath the arms and hoisted me to my feet.
The hem of the slate gown was ruined, soaked with rain and stained with grease and blood. The emeralds swung heavy against my chest.
"Can you run?" he asked, his hands lingering on my waist, holding me steady against the shuddering gale coming through the broken glass.
"I don't have shoes."
Alessandro looked down at the floor, littered with shattered crystal and leaded glass. Without a word, he reached down, ripped the long silk drapes from the nearby window, and with terrifying efficiency, wrapped the heavy fabric tightly around both of my feet, securing the knots with strips of torn linen from his own shirt.
"It will hold for twenty minutes," he said. He picked up the Kimber from the floor, dropped the empty magazine, slapped a fresh seven-round clip into the well, and chambered a round with a sharp, mechanical *clack*.
He pulled a second weapon—a compact Glock 19—from his ankle holster and pressed it into my hands.
The metal was warm from his skin.
"Do you know how to use this?"
"Point and squeeze," I whispered, my fingers curling around the textured grip. "My brother had an illegal piece he kept under the floorboards before I threw it in the river."
"Don't pull the trigger unless they are close enough to smell your breath," Alessandro said. "Keep your thumb below the slide or it will take the skin off your hand."
He caught my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze.
"You stay behind me, Grace. If I go down, you do not stop to check my pulse. You take the tunnel at the end of the wine cellar, you run three hundred yards to the boathouse, and you take the Boston Whaler. The keys are in the ignition. You don't look back."
"You're not going down," I said, my voice hardening despite the terror clawing at my throat.
The corner of his mouth twitched—that same razor-sharp flicker from the kitchen.
"No," he agreed. "I’m not."
We moved into the gallery.
The hallway was choked with acrid, gray smoke that tasted of sulfur and burning insulation. The emergency lights had kicked in, bathing the marble statues and oil paintings in an eerie, pulsing amber glow.
At the end of the hall, near the grand staircase, two men in tactical gear emerged from the shadows.
Alessandro fired twice.
The double-tap was rhythmic, mechanical, terrifyingly precise. Both men collapsed forward onto the Persian carpet before they could raise their submachine guns. Alessandro didn't break stride, stepping over the bodies, his eyes scanning the mezzanine above.
"Down!" he hissed, his arm hooking around my waist, pulling me down behind a solid mahogany sideboard as a burst of automatic fire ripped through the plaster walls above our heads.
Shards of gilded wood and pulverized drywall rained down on us like snow.
Across the landing, pinned behind a marble column, was Ethan. His assault rifle was empty, smoke curling from the barrel, his left arm hanging limp, blood soaking through his dark suit sleeve.
"Two shooters on the chandelier rigging!" Ethan shouted over the din. "They have thermal scopes!"
Alessandro leaned his back against the sideboard, breathing slow, steady breaths. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, heavy cylinder—a flashbang grenade he had lifted from the first mercenary's vest.
"Grace," he whispered.
"I’m here."
"When this goes off, run to Ethan. Help him to the cellar stairs. I will clear the landing."
"Alessandro, there are two of them—"
"I don't negotiate with targets, Grace," he said coldly.
He pulled the pin with his teeth, cooked the cylinder for one second, and lobbed it over the sideboard toward the high mezzanine.
The detonation was an explosion of white sun and thunder that rattled my teeth in their sockets.
Alessandro moved before the sound had even finished bouncing off the stone walls.
He rose, his Kimber barking three, four, five times into the blinding white smoke of the mezzanine. A body fell from the high rigging, hitting the marble floor below with a sickening, wet crunch. A second body slumped over the gilded railing, dangling lifelessly forty feet above the grand foyer.
"Move!" Alessandro roared.
I scrambled across the floor, the silk wraps on my feet muffling my steps. I reached Ethan just as his knees gave out. The big man slumped against the column, his skin gray, his breath whistling through his teeth.
"Come on," I grunted, hooking my shoulder under his uninjured right arm. "Up, Blake. You don't get to die on Matteo's carpet."
Ethan let out a wet, breathless laugh. "You're bossy... for a maid."
"Move your legs or I’ll shoot you myself," I snapped, hauling his massive frame toward the narrow service door that led down to the cellars.
Behind us, Alessandro was a ghost of violence. He moved backward, firing with deliberate, rhythmic cruelty, suppressing the last two shooters attempting to breach the front foyer.
We tumbled through the heavy oak door into the cool, dark belly of the estate.
Alessandro followed, slammed the five-inch-thick timber door shut, dropped the heavy iron crossbar into place, and drove two high-tensile steel wedges into the threshold with the heel of his boot.
The wood shuddered almost instantly as three shotgun blasts tore into the exterior face of the door, but the reinforced oak held.
The silence of the subterranean cellar closed in around us, broken only by Ethan’s ragged breathing and the steady drip of wine from a shattered bottle of 1945 Romanée-Conti.
Alessandro stood against the barred door, his chest heaving, the empty slide of his Kimber locked back. He dropped the gun, pulled a heavy tactical knife from his belt, and slid it into his boot.
Then he looked at me.
I was covered in blood, plaster dust, and black soot. The slate-gray dress was shredded from the knee down, my hair wild, the emeralds resting crooked against my collarbone. But the Glock was still held high in my two hands, pointed steadily at the dark corridor ahead.
Alessandro walked toward me. He didn't check Ethan. He didn't look at the steel door.
He reached out, his bare, scarred hand gently covering mine, guiding the muzzle of the Glock downward until it pointed at the floor.
"Safe," he murmured, his voice dropping into that deep, gravelly register that made my vision blur with sudden, violent tears. "You're safe, Grace."
"We're in a basement," I whispered, the adrenaline finally crashing, my knees shaking so violently that Alessandro had to catch me before I hit the stone flags. "With six men trying to kill us."
"They aren't trying to kill us anymore," Alessandro said softly, his arms wrapping around me, lifting me completely off the cold floor against his chest. "They're trying to figure out how to escape before the city police—and fifty of my soldiers—seal the perimeter."
He looked down at Ethan, who was propped against a wine rack, tying a tourniquet around his arm with his teeth.
"Ethan."
"Yeah, Boss?"
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"Call the cleaner," Alessandro said, his voice returning to that diamond-hard, unyielding tone that ruled the North Side. "And tell Antonio Bellini that if he isn't out of Illinois by sunrise, I won't just take his docks. I’ll take his name."
***
