Chapter 2 - The Scent Of Cordite
My trembling fingers wrestled with the heavy brass deadbolt. When the door swung open, Marcus was standing in the corridor with a tactical carbine slung across his chest. His charcoal jacket was gone, his dress shirt smeared with soot and dark streaks that smelled copper-rich and metallic.
"Grab your coat and leave your shoes," Marcus ordered, his tone devoid of panic but taut as piano wire. "The southern gates were compromised forty minutes ago. Rival syndicates from New Jersey believe Luca is incapacitated from his surgery."
"Is he?" I asked, pulling my wool cardigan around my shoulders. "He was bleeding again this afternoon!"
"He's currently in the great foyer reminding thirty armed men why this city answers to him," Marcus said grimly, handing me a small digital keycard. "Take the service lift behind the linen room straight down to the wine vault. There is a reinforced bunker beneath the fourth rack. Wait there until either I or Luca opens the hatch."
Before I could reply, the mansion’s backup generators groaned, plunging the corridor into pitch blackness. Red emergency backup lights flickered on a second later, painting the walls in ominous crimson.
A deafening blast shook the foundation, rattling the crystal sconces overhead. Marcus shoved me toward the linen closet. "Move! Now!"
I didn't take the lift.
Call it stupidity, or call it the reckless instinct of a woman who had spent five years watching her mother slowly fade away in understaffed clinics while feeling powerless to stop it. I couldn't just hide in a dark cellar while the man who had wiped away my crushing debts fought for his life two floors down.
I slipped past the service elevator and reached the balcony overlooking the two-story marble foyer. Crouching behind the heavy mahogany balustrade, I peered down into the smoke-filled hall.
The scene below was pure organized chaos. Shattered glass from the front portico covered the floor like crushed ice. Four masked gunmen lay motionless near the entrance, their weapons scattered across the polished stone. Standing in the center of the grand entryway, completely unfazed by the smoke, was Luca.
He had stripped off his dress shirt, wearing only a black tactical vest over his bare, heavily scarred torso. The white bandage I had so carefully taped to his bicep was soaked through with fresh crimson, but his hand was rock-steady as he held a heavy semiautomatic pistol pointed directly at a kneeling, bruised intruder.
"Who opened the outer perimeter gate, Vincent?" Luca’s voice boomed through the echoing hall, terrifyingly calm. "Tell me, and I might allow your family to keep their home in Queens."
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"Go to hell, Rossi," the kneeling man spat, coughing blood. "Don't act like you're still the king. The council knows you're bleeding. They know you're weak."
Luca took one deliberate step forward, the barrel of his weapon never wavering. "Let me show you how weak I am."
