Chapter 9 - The Trial by Fire
The shot took the mercenary standing to Silvano’s left directly through the throat.
Chaos erupted.
Damon dropped behind the balustrade as a hail of automatic gunfire shredded the plaster and mahogany behind him. Dante seized the distraction, leaning out from behind the overturned marble table and firing three rapid shots, dropping two more of Silvano’s men in the foyer.
Alina watched the screens in agony.
On the mezzanine monitor, she saw a mercenary flank Damon from the library corridor. The man raised a shotgun, leveling it at Damon’s back.
"No!" Alina screamed at the glass screen, helpless, a prisoner of her own sanctuary.
Damon spun, but the shotgun roared.
The blast caught Damon in the shoulder and upper arm, the impact throwing him violently against the wall. His weapon clattered away, sliding across the blood-slicked floorboards.
Silvano walked up the stairs, laughing, his pistol raised. "You always were too stubborn to survive, nephew!"
In the bunker, Alina looked at the shotgun mounted beneath the desk.
She looked at Mia, who was still singing softly through her tears, eyes closed, clutching her green dinosaur.
*If I stay here, they kill him. Then they cut through the door and kill us.*
The fear that had dictated her life for three years—the terror of the mafia, of the violence, of the shadows—crystallized into pure, incandescent maternal fury.
She was Marco Vandetti’s wife. She was the woman who had survived the ashes.
Alina grabbed the heavy combat shotgun. She racked the slide with a furious, metallic snap.
She turned to the manual emergency release on the vault door.
*Clank-clank-whoosh.*
The heavy steel door swung open.
Alina sprinted into the dark cellar, taking the stairs two at a time, moving through the service corridors she had cleaned for eight months. She knew every squeak. She knew every floorboard. She knew the secret entrance to the mezzanine balcony that overlooked the library.
Up on the mezzanine, Silvano stood over Damon, who was bleeding heavily from his shoulder, propped up against the wreckage of a marble statue.
Silvano pointed his gun between Damon’s eyes. "Give my regards to your father. And to Marco."
"Silvano!"
The old man turned, bewildered.
Standing in the archway of the library, barefoot, her maid’s apron stained with grease and gunpowder, was Alina.
She didn't hesitate. She didn't deliver a speech. She didn't tremble.
She pulled the trigger.
The blast struck Silvano square in the chest, the heavy buckshot shattering his ribs and throwing his body over the mahogany balustrade. He crashed onto the marble floor of the foyer below, lifeless, his blood pooling among the shattered glass.
The remaining two mercenaries in the foyer froze, looking from their dead employer to the woman holding the smoking shotgun on the balcony, and then to Dante, who leveled his rifle at their heads.
"Drop them," Dante roared.
The mercenaries dropped their weapons, raising their hands in absolute surrender.
Alina dropped the shotgun. The recoil had bruised her shoulder, but she didn't feel it. She fell to her knees beside Damon, her hands pressing desperately against the bleeding wound on his arm.
"Damon! Damon, look at me!" she sobbed, tears blurring her vision.
Damon opened his eyes. The pain was etched deep into his features, but when he saw her face, when he saw the fire burning in her amber eyes, a slow, ragged smile touched his lips.
"Marco..." Damon whispered, coughing softly, his hand reaching up to touch her trembling fingers. "Marco picked a hell of a wife."
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"Shut up," she wept, pressing her forehead against his uninjured shoulder. "Shut up and don't you dare die on us."
***
