CHAPTER 25
DANTE
The speedometer of the heavy black truck hit ninety-five as I tore down the dark, winding stretch of the Pennsylvania turnpike.
I didn't care about state troopers. I didn't care about the speed cameras. The only thing occupying my mind was the distance between my front bumper and the farmhouse I had left an hour ago.
Leo used the bridge hit as a distraction.
Silas’s words played on a relentless loop in my head.
I gripped the steering wheel, the leather groaning under the pressure.
I had underestimated Leo Vitiello. I had treated him like a politician when I should have treated him like a snake.
He didn't want the ledgers. He wanted the city.
And to get the city, he needed to eliminate the only two things keeping the Morretti syndicate anchored.
My blood. And my wife.
I slammed my hand against the steering wheel, a sharp, violent curse tearing from my throat.
How did he find the farmhouse?
Elias was a ghost. He didn't use cell phones, he didn't use credit cards, and the property was registered to a dead man. The only people who knew the location were me, Luca, and Silas. None of them would betray me.
I glanced at the passenger seat. The heavy black duffel bag containing the ten million dollars and the fake passports sat exactly where Sienna had dropped it before we went inside.
My eyes locked onto the bag.
Antonio Rossi.
Rossi didn't just steal the money. He had packed the bag. He had prepared for a life on the run. A man that paranoid wouldn't just trust a bag of untraceable bearer bonds to sit in a hotel room. He would track it.
I reached over, grabbing the duffel bag with my right hand, ignoring the sharp pull of pain in my bandaged bicep. I dragged it onto my lap, steering with my left hand.
I unzipped the main compartment. The stacks of bonds were neatly banded together. I shoved my hand past the paper, feeling along the thick nylon lining at the bottom of the bag.
My fingers brushed against a hard, plastic square sewn into the seam.
I ripped the lining open.
A small, black GPS tracker fell out, its tiny green light blinking steadily in the dark cabin.
Rossi hadn't just framed Sienna. He had inadvertently handed Leo Vitiello a homing beacon straight to her location. When I took the bag from Rossi in Miami and brought it to the farmhouse, I had led the wolves directly to my own door.
I rolled the window down and threw the tracker out into the night.
It didn't matter anymore. They already knew where she was.
I pressed the accelerator to the floor. The truck roared, eating up the miles of dark asphalt. I calculated the timeline. Elias had called me at 2:15 AM. It was now 2:40 AM. If Leo’s men had breached the perimeter of the farmhouse when Elias made the call, they had a twenty-five-minute head start.
Elias was a paranoid bomb-maker with a house full of illegal weapons. He wouldn't go down easy. But he was one man, and he was trying to protect a woman who had never fired a gun in her life.
The turnoff for the unpaved access road appeared in the headlights.
I didn't slow down. I ripped the steering wheel to the right, the heavy truck fishtailing violently on the crushed limestone before the four-wheel drive caught and launched us forward into the dense trees.
I killed the headlights.
I navigated the last mile in absolute darkness, relying on memory and the faint moonlight filtering through the canopy. The roar of the diesel engine was loud, but as I crested the final hill leading down into the valley where the farmhouse sat, another sound drowned it out.
Gunfire.
It wasn't the suppressed, tactical fire of a professional hit. It was the chaotic, deafening roar of heavy shotguns and automatic rifles.
I slammed on the brakes, throwing the truck into park behind a thick cluster of pine trees fifty yards from the edge of the clearing. I grabbed my Glock from the shoulder holster, chambered a round, and stepped out into the freezing night air.
The farmhouse was under siege.
Four black SUVs were parked haphazardly in the gravel driveway. At least eight men were using the vehicles for cover, pouring sustained automatic fire into the front windows of the house. The glass was gone. The wooden siding was splintering under the heavy barrage.
But the house was fighting back.
From the second-floor window, a massive, deafening boom echoed across the valley. One of the men crouched behind the lead SUV was thrown backward, his chest torn open by a heavy slug from Elias’s shotgun.
"Cover the door!" a voice yelled from behind the second vehicle. "Burn them out if you have to!"
They weren't trying to capture Sienna. They were trying to execute her.
A cold, unnerving stillness settled over my mind. The panic that had driven me down the highway vanished, replaced by the lethal, mechanical focus that had kept me alive in this world for fifteen years.
I didn't have an army. I didn't have Luca or Silas to flank the enemy.
I had twelve rounds in my magazine and a wife inside that house who was depending on me to keep my promise.
I moved through the tree line, keeping low, using the darkness as cover. The men were entirely focused on the farmhouse, their muzzle flashes blinding their own night vision. They were sloppy. They thought they had the numbers to overwhelm an old man and a girl.
I stepped out from behind a massive oak tree, ten feet behind the rear SUV.
Two men were reloading their weapons, their backs to me.
I raised the Glock.
I didn't offer a warning. I didn't announce my presence. I put a bullet through the base of the first man’s skull. He dropped instantly, his rifle clattering against the gravel.
The second man spun around, his eyes wide with shock, but he never managed to raise his weapon. I shot him twice in the chest.
The gunfire from the house paused.
The remaining six men realized they were taking fire from the rear.
"Contact rear!" one of them screamed, diving behind the engine block of the third SUV.
I didn't stop moving. If I stayed stationary, they would pin me down and overwhelm me. I sprinted across the open gap between the trees and the first SUV, sliding across the hood just as a hail of bullets chewed through the metal where I had been standing.
I dropped behind the passenger side door, checking my magazine. Eight rounds left.
"It’s Morretti!" a voice yelled from the other side of the vehicles. "Put him down!"
I took a slow breath, ignoring the hot, tearing pain in my right arm. I needed to thin their numbers before they realized I was alone.
I popped up over the hood of the SUV, acquiring a target instantly. A man was trying to flank me on the left. I squeezed the trigger. The bullet caught him in the throat. He went down hard, clutching his neck.
Five left.
Suddenly, the front door of the farmhouse kicked open.
I froze, my heart stopping in my chest.
Sienna stepped out onto the porch.
She wasn't hiding. She wasn't cowering. She was holding a short-barreled tactical shotgun, her face pale but completely set. She didn't look at the men hiding behind the cars. She looked straight across the driveway, her eyes finding me behind the SUV.
"Sienna, get back inside!" I roared, the tactical silence completely forgotten.
She didn't retreat. She raised the shotgun, bracing the heavy stock against her shoulder exactly the way Elias must have shown her in the last hour.
The remaining Vitiello men saw her. Two of them broke from cover, raising their rifles to take the shot.
Sienna pulled the trigger.
The recoil of the weapon nearly knocked her off her feet, but the spread of the buckshot was devastating at that range. One of the men took the blast directly to the chest, spinning violently before hitting the dirt.
The second man hesitated, shocked by the sudden aggression from the target they thought was helpless.
I didn't give him time to recover. I stepped out from behind the SUV and put two rounds into his center mass.
Three left.
They realized the situation had completely unraveled. They were caught in a crossfire between the Don of New York and a woman who apparently refused to die quietly.
"Fall back!" the leader yelled, scrambling toward the driver’s side of the only undamaged SUV.
They broke cover, running for the vehicle.
I didn't let them reach it. I moved forward, methodically dropping the last three men before they could open the doors. The final man fell against the tire, his hand still reaching for the handle.
The gunfire ceased.
The silence that rushed back into the valley was deafening, broken only by the hiss of a punctured radiator and the harsh, ragged sound of my own breathing.
I dropped the empty magazine from my Glock, slapping a fresh one into place, and kept my weapon raised as I cleared the vehicles. None of them were moving.
I turned toward the house.
Sienna was still standing on the porch. She had lowered the shotgun, her hands shaking so violently the barrel was rattling against the wooden railing. The adrenaline was crashing out of her system, leaving her pale and entirely fragile.
I holstered my weapon and ran toward her.
I took the porch steps two at a time. I didn't ask if she was okay. I didn't check the house for Elias. I grabbed the shotgun out of her hands, tossing it onto the floorboards, and pulled her flush against my chest.
She collapsed against me, her arms wrapping fiercely around my waist, her face burying into my neck. She let out a broken, ragged sob, her entire body trembling against mine.
"I’m here," I murmured, burying my face in her hair, breathing in the scent of smoke, vanilla, and survival. "I’ve got you. It’s over."
She gripped the fabric of my shirt, her fingers digging into my back. "I thought you weren't going to make it."
"I promised you I would come back," I said, my voice thick with an emotion I had never allowed myself to feel before. Absolute, terrifying love. "I will always come back for you."
The heavy tread of boots sounded from inside the house.
Elias walked out onto the porch. He was bleeding from a shallow cut on his forehead, his coveralls covered in dust, but he was holding his customized shotgun with a steady grip.
He looked at the bodies scattered across his driveway, then looked at me holding Sienna.
"I told you," Elias grunted, spitting a mouthful of blood over the railing. "You should have called before you came over."
I looked over Sienna’s shoulder at the old man. "Are there any more?"
"No. That was the whole squad." Elias wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "But they aren't the only problem, Dante. While we were shooting, Luca called the secure line again."
The relief that had just begun to settle in my chest vanished.
"What happened at the estate?" I asked, keeping my arms tightly wrapped around Sienna.
"Luca held them off," Elias said grimly. "The Vitiello men didn't breach the main house. But they didn't leave empty-handed."
I pulled back slightly, looking down at Sienna. Her brown eyes were wide, the fear returning instantly.
"What did they take?" she whispered.
Elias looked at her, his expression softening with genuine pity.
"They couldn't get into the house, kid," Elias said quietly. "So they hit the west wing from the outside. They took your sister."