Chapter 5 - THE DEAD BOLT
“Dante!” Rico roared, his massive shoulder slamming against the solid mahogany door. The wood barely groaned. It was reinforced core, designed to keep assassins out of the nursery. Now, it was keeping them in.
“Don’t bother, Rico,” Dante’s voice drifted through the door, muffled but clear. “I cut the security cameras. The perimeter guards work for me now. I’m sorry it had to end this way, brother. But you were getting soft. A boss who cries over his kid’s tantrums is a boss who gets us all killed.”
“You set the fire!” Rico shouted, drawing his gun, aiming it at the wood. “You killed Elena!”
“Elena was a casualty of war!” Dante snapped back, his calm facade finally cracking. “She found out about the clinic, Rico. She found out my son was still alive.”
Clara gasped, holding Leo tight against her chest.
His son. Dante had a child.
“What are you talking about?” Rico demanded, his gun hand shaking.
“Three years ago, my girl had a baby,” Dante said, his voice dripping with old poison. “Your father found out. The old man didn't want any bastards weakening the bloodline. He ordered my apartment burned down. They told me my boy died in the crib.”
Rico froze. His father—the ruthless Don who was now rotting in a federal prison—had ordered a hit on Dante’s infant son.
“He survived,” Dante continued, his voice thick with emotion. “I found him in the ashes. He was burned, Rico. Badly. I hid him at the St. Jude clinic upstate. I needed money to pay for his surgeries. When Elena saw the bank transfers, she thought I was stealing from you. I had to silence her.”
“So you burned her alive?” Rico whispered, the betrayal shattering the last remnants of his icy armor.
“I saved Leo!” Dante yelled. “I pulled your son out of the back seat before the car went up! That makes us even!”
A heavy thud echoed against the door. Dante was blocking it with furniture.
“The house is wired, Rico,” Dante said softly. “In three minutes, the gas lines are going to rupture. Goodbye.”
Footsteps retreated down the hall.
Panic flooded Clara’s chest. Leo began to cry again, the shrill, terrified sound of a child who remembered the smell of smoke.
“Rico, we have to get out!” Clara yelled over the boy’s cries.
Rico didn't panic. He holstered his gun and ran to the nursery window. He threw open the curtains. They were on the second floor. A straight twenty-foot drop to the stone patio below.
“The window is bulletproof glass, bolted shut,” Rico said, scanning the room. He ran to Leo’s heavy oak changing table. “Help me push this.”
Clara put Leo down in the corner. “Stay there, baby. Cover your ears.”
Together, Clara and Rico shoved the massive oak dresser across the carpet. With a deafening crash, they rammed it through the bulletproof glass. The pane held on the first strike, spider-webbing across the surface.
“Again!” Rico grunted.
They slammed it a second time. The frame buckled, and the glass shattered outward, raining down onto the stone patio.
The smell of raw natural gas was already seeping under the nursery door.
Rico grabbed a thick velvet curtain, ripping it from the rod, and tied it around Leo’s waist like a harness. He looked at Clara.
“I’m going to lower him down first,” Rico said. “Then you jump. I’ll catch you.”
“What about you?” Clara asked.
“I don't leave my son,” Rico said, his icy eyes meeting hers with absolute conviction. “And I don't leave my people.”
He lowered Leo out the window, the boy dangling over the dark drop until his feet hit the stone. Rico untied the curtain and turned to Clara.
“Go.”
Clara climbed onto the sill. She looked down into the dark. It was terrifying. But the smell of gas was overwhelming. She jumped.
She hit the ground hard, her ankle rolling with a sharp spike of pain, but she rolled into the grass, gasping for air.
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Above them, Rico climbed onto the ledge.
Just as he prepared to jump, the first floor of the mansion detonated.
