Chapter 4 - A DANGEROUS BARGAIN
The peace of the steel mill lasted exactly three hours.
At 5:00 a.m., the perimeter alarms shrieked—a piercing, mechanical wail that jolted Logan awake. He began to cry, clinging to my neck. The heavy steel door of the office flew open, and Mateo rushed in, a suppressed submachine gun slung across his chest.
“They breached the north gate,” Mateo shouted over the din of the alarms. “It’s a kill squad. Thirty men at least. Heavily armed. They bypassed the outer sensors.”
Alessandro forced himself to his feet. He swayed for a moment, his hand pressing against his freshly stitched side, but his face hardened into a mask of pure lethality. He reached under the desk and retrieved two sleek black handguns, tossing one to Mateo.
“The tunnel,” Alessandro ordered. He turned to me, grabbing my shoulder with surprising gentleness. “Keep the boy quiet. Walk behind me. If I tell you to run, you do not look back. Understand?”
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.
We moved through the dark, echoing belly of the mill. Gunfire erupted above us—the sharp cracks of automatic rifles echoing off the corrugated metal roof. Dust and rust rained down as we descended a rusted spiral staircase into a subterranean maintenance tunnel. The air grew damp and smelled of decaying concrete.
Halfway down the tunnel, Alessandro stumbled. A fresh patch of dark blood began to bloom through his white shirt. He hit the concrete wall, gasping for breath. The adrenaline was wearing off, and the physical trauma of three gunshot wounds was finally taking its toll.
“Boss,” Mateo said, panic edging his voice as he tried to support Alessandro’s massive frame. “We have half a mile to the extraction point.”
“Go,” Alessandro grunted, pushing Mateo away. “Take the woman and the kid. I’ll hold the choke point.”
“No,” I said. The word shocked me as much as it shocked them. I handed Logan to Mateo, who looked utterly bewildered holding a crying toddler. I ripped the hem of my scrub shirt, revealing the clean white undershirt beneath. I tore a massive strip of the fabric, stepped up to the most dangerous man in Baltimore, and shoved him back against the wall.
“Lift your arm,” I commanded.
Alessandro stared at me, his dark eyes wide with surprise. For a second, he looked like he might shoot me for the sheer audacity. But then, a low, breathy chuckle escaped his lips, and he complied. I wrapped the makeshift bandage tightly around his torso, tying it off with a brutal knot that made him hiss in pain.
“I know how to stop bleeding,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “I clean up trauma suites for a living. You are not dying down here. You promised to protect my son. You owe me that much. Now walk.”
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Alessandro looked at the tight, professional bind, then back at my face. The coldness in his eyes melted into a profound, blazing respect. “Let’s go,” he said, pushing off the wall with renewed strength.
We burst out of the tunnel just as the first explosion rocked the mill behind us. A black helicopter was waiting in a clearing, its rotors spinning furiously against the dawn sky. We piled in, and as the chopper lifted off, I looked down to see the steel mill engulfed in flames. We had survived the night, but the war had just begun.
