Chapter 2 - THE ALTAR OF BONES
The submachine gun erupted, shattering the cathedral’s holy silence.
But Dante Russo was already moving.
The broken red rose in the shadows had given him exactly three seconds of warning—a lifetime for a man raised in the underworld. Before the cellist could level the barrel at Dante’s chest, the syndicate boss dropped to his knees, his massive hand plunging through the gap in the velvet draping.
He didn’t know who the weeping woman under his stage was. He only knew she had just saved his life.
Dante’s fingers closed around Ivy’s wrist like a steel vise. He yanked her violently forward just as a spray of bullets tore through the velvet where her head had been a fraction of a second before. Wood splintered. Marble cracked. The deafening roar of automatic gunfire swallowed the screams of four hundred wedding guests.
"Keep your head down!" Dante roared over the chaos, dragging Ivy out from under the dais and throwing her behind the thick, bulletproof marble of the baptismal font.
Ivy was trembling so hard her teeth chattered. Her white apron was covered in green sap and the dust of the floorboards. She curled her knees to her chest, pressing her hands over her ears.
Above them, St. Patrick’s had turned into a slaughterhouse.
Enzo Falcone’s men were systematically executing Dante’s lieutenants in the pews. It wasn't a wedding. It was a massacre.
Dante didn’t pull a weapon from his tuxedo. He reached down, ripping a concealed 9mm Glock from an ankle holster. His eyes were cold, calculating, completely devoid of the panic that was suffocating Ivy.
"Why did you do it?" Dante demanded, his voice a low, terrifying rumble that cut straight through the gunfire.
"I—I needed the money!" Ivy gasped, tears streaking through the dirt on her cheeks. "The twenty thousand! To save my shop! If you died, the check would bounce!"
For a split second, something flickered in Dante’s dead-end gaze. Amusement. Or maybe respect.
"If we get out of this alive, I’ll write you one for fifty," Dante said flatly.
He popped the corner of the marble font, fired three precise shots, and three of Enzo’s gunmen dropped to the floor. The precision was terrifying.
"Move toward the sacristy door," Dante ordered, pulling Ivy to her feet. "Now."
They ran, heads ducked, slipping on the rose petals that now covered the blood-slicked marble floors. Dante shielded her with his body, his broad shoulders taking a grazing graze from a ricochet, but he didn't even flinch. He kicked the heavy oak door of the sacristy open, pulling her inside and throwing the iron deadbolt just as bodies slammed against it from the outside.
They were in the priest’s dressing chamber. It was a dead end.
"They're going to kill us," Ivy sobbed, backing away as the door shuddered under heavy blows.
Dante ignored her, striding toward a massive mahogany wardrobe. "Enzo is a rabid dog, but he’s not smart enough to orchestrate a hit this deep inside my territory without inside help."
He pushed the wardrobe effortlessly. Behind it was a narrow, centuries-old maintenance tunnel that led to the crypts.
"Go," he commanded.
Ivy didn't hesitate. She scrambled into the dark tunnel, Dante right behind her. As they navigated the damp, pitch-black corridors beneath the church, Ivy felt a strange, terrifying shift in her reality. She was a florist. A woman struggling to pay rent. Now, she was running through catacombs with the most dangerous man in Chicago.
They emerged blocks away, in a forgotten alleyway where a black, unmarked SUV was waiting. It was Dante's emergency exfil vehicle.
He shoved her into the passenger seat and climbed behind the wheel, starting the engine. But before he put the car in drive, Dante paused. His eyes locked onto the passenger seat floorboard.
Ivy followed his gaze.
Resting on the floor mat was a heavy, silver Zippo lighter, engraved with the initials C.V.
Carlo Vane. Dante’s most trusted advisor. The man who had practically raised him.
Dante picked up the lighter, his knuckles turning white. The betrayal was absolute. Carlo was the one who had arranged the cathedral's security.
Suddenly, Ivy's phone buzzed in her apron pocket. She pulled it out, her blood running cold. It was a text message from an unknown number.
We know about Lily.
Ivy dropped the phone, a visceral, animalistic terror gripping her throat. Lily. Her seven-year-old niece.
Dante looked at the screen, then back at Ivy, the pieces clicking together. This wasn't just a mob hit.
"Who is Lily?" Dante asked, his voice deadly quiet.
May you like
"My niece," Ivy whispered, completely broken. "And they just took her."
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