Chapter 7 - THE GOLD WATCH AND THE POLICE SIRENS
The metallic snick of Celine’s lighter echoed in the tense, smoke-filled office.
Dante didn’t raise his hands. He stood by the fireplace holding the singed carbon ledger, his eyes fixed on the two armed men in tactical gear. They weren’t police. They didn’t have badges or insignias. They were private muscle, likely paid off-the-books by the same Cayman gambling syndicate Victor had used to launder Celine’s debt ten years ago.
“You really think you can shoot a CEO and a civilian in downtown Chicago and cover it up, Victor?” Dante asked, his voice steady, though I saw the tight cords of muscle standing out on his neck. “My driver knows I’m in here.”
“Your driver is currently asleep behind the wheel of your SUV in the alley,” Celine sneered, stepping into the office. She looked at me, her eyes flashing with a sickening, triumphant glee. “My men used a stun gun on him through the open window before they came upstairs. Don’t worry, the old convict isn’t dead. But he will be going back to prison tomorrow when the police find him passed out in the getaway car of a jewelry heist.”
My breath caught in my throat. Dad.
“You touched him?” I lunged forward, pure, blinding rage overriding my fear of the guns.
One of the armed men took a step forward, raising the barrel of his suppressed pistol directly at my face.
Dante moved faster than I thought possible. He grabbed my arm, yanking me hard behind his broad shoulders, placing his own body entirely between me and the weapon.
“Don’t touch her,” Dante growled, a feral, protective intensity radiating from him that made the armed man hesitate. Dante glared at Victor over the barrel of the gun. “What’s the play here, Victor? You kill us, burn the ledger, and claim we died trying to rob you?”
Victor walked calmly over to his mahogany desk and poured himself a glass of scotch.
“That’s exactly the play, Dante,” Victor said, taking a slow sip. “I told the police you were the mastermind of the forgery ring. Tomorrow morning, when they find your body inside my store with the stolen 2014 sapphire necklace in your pocket, it will confirm everything I said. The DA will conclude you panicked, tried to break in to steal the remaining evidence to cover your tracks, and my private security contractors acted in justifiable self-defense.”
Victor smiled over the rim of his glass. “It’s clean. It’s elegant. And it solves all my problems.”
Celine walked over to Dante, stopping just out of arm’s reach. She held out her hand, her eyes locked on the singed black book in Dante’s grip.
“Give me the ledger, Dante,” Celine demanded softly. “Toss it into the fireplace. And give me my necklace back.”
Dante looked at Celine, then at Victor, and finally at the two armed men blocking the door. We were trapped. There was no secret exit, no panic button we could reach. The heavy soundproofing of the executive office meant no one on the street would hear the suppressed gunshots.
Dante reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the heavy sapphire necklace. The lab-grown stones glittered coldly in the firelight.
He held it out, dangling it from his index finger.
“You want it, Celine?” Dante asked quietly.
“Hand it over,” she ordered.
Dante didn’t hand it to her.
With a sudden, violent flick of his wrist, Dante hurled the sapphire necklace as hard as he could—not at Celine, but directly at the heavy, floor-to-ceiling plate glass window overlooking Michigan Avenue.
The heavy gold and sapphire piece struck the reinforced glass with the force of a bullet. The window didn’t shatter completely, but a massive, spider-webbing crack exploded across the pane with a deafening CRACK that shook the entire room.
“Are you insane?!” Victor screamed, diving behind his desk as a shower of glass dust rained down on the carpet.
The two armed men flinched, their weapons wavering for a fraction of a second at the explosive sound.
That fraction of a second was all Dante needed.
He grabbed the heavy steel Maglite flashlight he’d been holding in his left hand and hurled it like a javelin straight into the blazing marble fireplace.
The heavy steel cylinder smashed directly into the glowing gas logs. Sparks and burning embers erupted outward in a blinding shower of fire and ash, showering Celine and the two armed men.
Celine shrieked, throwing her arms over her face as hot ash singed her designer coat. The armed men stumbled backward, blinded by the sudden explosion of embers, coughing violently as the room filled with thick, choking smoke.
“Jenna, move!” Dante roared.
He didn’t run for the door. He grabbed my hand, hauled me behind Victor’s massive solid-oak desk, and slammed his shoulder into the heavy oak bookshelves lining the back wall.
“Push!” Dante yelled, wedging his shoes into the carpet and shoving against the bookshelf.
I didn’t ask questions. I threw my weight against the polished wood beside him, pushing with every ounce of adrenaline flooding my system.
The bookshelf groaned, then gave way with a heavy click, swinging outward on hidden steel hinges to reveal a narrow, pitch-black maintenance corridor leading to the building’s air conditioning ducts.
“The ventilation shaft!” Victor yelled from the floor, coughing through the smoke. “They’re in the maintenance shaft! Shoot them!”
Thwip-thwip-thwip!
Three suppressed bullets slammed into the heavy oak bookshelf inches from my head, splintering the wood and sending shards flying into my hair.
Dante shoved me into the dark corridor, dove in behind me, and kicked the heavy bookshelf shut just as another volley of bullets hit the other side.
We were in absolute darkness, the air thick with dust and the smell of old ozone.
“Keep moving!” Dante whispered fiercely, grabbing my hand and pulling me blindly down the narrow, metal-grated walkway. “There’s a service hatch at the end of this duct that drops into the alley!”
“How do you know that?!” I gasped, my lungs burning as we sprinted through the dark.
“My father’s company insured this building twenty years ago!” Dante yelled back. “I read the architectural blueprints when I took over the portfolio!”
We reached the end of the walkway. Faint, yellowish light filtered through a metal grate set into the floor. Dante kicked the grate as hard as he could with the heel of his shoe. It bent, groaning against the rusted screws. He kicked it again, and the grate gave way, clattering down into the darkness below.
“Jump!” Dante ordered.
I dropped through the hole, bracing myself. I hit the wet pavement of the alley hard, rolling to absorb the impact, scraping my knees on the rough asphalt. Dante landed heavily right beside me a second later.
We were standing in the pouring rain, ten feet behind Dante’s black SUV.
The driver’s side door was hanging open.
I scrambled to my feet, sheer terror gripping my chest. “Dad!”
I ran to the open door.
The driver’s seat was empty.
My father was gone.
“They took him!” I screamed, turning to Dante in the rain, the panic finally breaking me. “Celine said they used a stun gun! They took him upstairs or into their car!”
Dante ran to the SUV, quickly checking the backseat and the trunk. Empty.
Before he could say a word, the heavy metal door at the end of the alley slammed open. The two armed men burst out into the rain, their suppressed pistols raised, sweeping the alley for targets.
“Get down!” Dante hissed, tackling me behind a heavy green commercial dumpster just as a bullet sparked off the brick wall behind us.
We were pinned. We had no weapons, no car keys, and my father was missing. The rain was coming down in sheets, washing the blood from my scraped knees down my legs.
Dante pulled me tight against his chest behind the rusted steel dumpster, shielding me with his body as the two men slowly advanced down the alley, their footsteps splashing in the deep puddles.
“We can’t fight guns, Dante,” I whispered, tears mixing with the rain on my face, my heart shattering at the thought of losing my father again. “We have to give them the ledger.”
Dante looked down at the singed black book still clutched in his left hand. Then he looked at me, his dark eyes fierce and uncompromising.
“We aren’t giving them a damn thing,” Dante said softly.
He reached into his soaked tuxedo trousers and pulled out his cell phone. The screen was cracked from the jump, but it was still glowing.
He didn’t dial 911.
He dialed a private number. He put it on speakerphone and held it between us.
It rang twice.
“Marino,” a gruff, familiar voice answered over the speaker. It wasn’t the police. It was Dante’s head of corporate security.
“Status,” Dante said, his voice deadly calm.
“In position, Boss,” the security chief replied, the sound of heavy rain echoing through his mic. “We’ve got the perimeter locked down. Just waiting for your signal.”
Dante smiled, a grim, terrifying smile that sent a shiver down my spine.
“Light them up,” Dante ordered.
Suddenly, the narrow, dark alley exploded with blinding, high-intensity halogen light.
At both ends of the alley, blocking all exits, three massive, black armored Chevrolet Suburbans threw on their police-grade rooftop light bars, painting the brick walls in strobing red and blue.
The two armed men froze in the center of the alley, throwing their hands up to shield their eyes from the blinding glare.
“Drop the weapons! Hands in the air!” a booming voice echoed from a megaphone atop the lead Suburban.
A dozen men in heavy body armor bearing the MARINO SECURITY crest swarmed out of the vehicles, raising assault rifles and surrounding the two tactical gunmen before they could even blink. The gunmen, realizing they were massively outgunned, dropped their pistols into the puddles and raised their hands.
Dante stood up from behind the dumpster, pulling me up with him.
He didn’t look at the gunmen. He looked toward the lead Suburban at the end of the alley.
The back door of the armored vehicle opened.
Stepping out into the rain, looking pale and shaken but entirely unharmed, was my father.
“Dad!” I screamed, sprinting past the surrendered gunmen and throwing myself into his arms.
“I’m okay, Bear! I’m okay!” my father cried, hugging me so tight I couldn’t breathe. “When you and Dante went inside, I saw those two men coming down the street with guns! I knew I couldn’t fight them, so I ran to the end of the alley and hid in the doorway of the bakery! Dante’s security team pulled up two minutes later and pulled me into their truck!”
I buried my face in his shoulder, sobbing with pure, unadulterated relief.
Dante walked slowly up the alley, the rain plastering his hair to his forehead, his tuxedo ruined, still holding the singed black ledger in his hand. He looked at my father and nodded respectfully.
Then, the wail of genuine police sirens cut through the storm.
Half a dozen Chicago PD cruisers screeched to a halt on Michigan Avenue, blocking the front entrance to Victor’s store.
Victor and Celine were trapped inside.
May you like
Dante turned to me, holding out his hand. Not to take something from me, but offering it to me.
“Come on, Jenna,” Dante said softly, the strobing red and blue lights reflecting in his eyes. “It’s time to show the police who the real thieves are.”
