Chapter 5 - Blood Money and Broken Glass
The ballroom exploded into pure chaos as the first barrage of high-caliber rounds shattered the towering stained-glass windows along the eastern corridor. Shards of multicolored glass rained down like lethal confetti, shredding the velvet drapes and sending the city’s most powerful families scrambling under overturned tables for cover.
“Kill them all!” Richard Sterling screamed, lunging across the table to grab a steak knife from a fallen platter.
Before he could take two steps, Dante moved with blinding, inhuman speed. He caught Richard’s wrist, twisting the bone until a sharp snap echoed over the gunfire. Richard shrieked in agony as the knife clattered uselessly to the floor. Dante drove a vicious elbow into the older man’s temple, sending him crashing unconscious into a pyramid of champagne flutes.
“Marcus! Keep the capos secure!” Dante commanded over the deafening noise of combat. “Lock this room down from the inside! I am going to the medical wing!”
“Boss, take backup!” Marcus yelled, returning fire through the shattered doorway as two masked gunmen in tactical gear attempted to breach the grand foyer.
“I don't need backup,” Dante growled, drawing a custom black firearm from beneath his shoulder rig. “I need blood.”
Dante vaulted over the marble staircase, taking the stairs three at a time as bullets gouged plaster from the classical statues lining the walls. His mind was entirely stripped of business, money, and power. Every beat of his heart thundered with a single, desperate thought: Isabella. My child.
On the third floor, the emergency backup lights bathed the medical corridor in an eerie crimson glow. As Dante rounded the corner, he found Dr. Rossi lying against the wall, holding a bleeding shoulder wound, his breath shallow.
“Rossi!” Dante knelt beside the old physician, checking his pulse.
“They... they breached through the service elevator, Don Dante,” Rossi gasped, pointing toward the heavy double doors of Isabella’s private room. “Two men... heavily armed. She locked the deadbolt from the inside, but they have breaching charges... hurry!”
Dante’s blood turned to liquid nitrogen. He rose to his feet, stepping soundlessly across the polished linoleum. Through the reinforced viewing window of the room, he saw Isabella.
She was standing, trembling violently on bare feet, clutching an iron IV stand like a medieval spear. Her hospital gown was soaked in sweat, her breath hitching in agonizing gasps as another contraction ripped through her body, but her eyes burned with the ferocious, terrifying fury of a mother defending her cub.
Outside her door, a towering mercenary in combat fatigues was attaching a C4 breaching block to the electronic lock, while his partner covered the hallway.
Dante didn't shout a warning.
He raised his weapon and fired twice through the drywall. The first round caught the covering gunman in the neck, dropping him instantly in a spray of dark crimson. The second mercenary whipped around, reaching for his assault rifle, but Dante closed the distance in a heartbeat.
Dante caught the barrel of the rifle, redirecting the spray of bullets into the ceiling tiles, and drove his combat knife straight upward beneath the man’s tactical vest, piercing his heart. The mercenary gasped, his eyes widening in shock, before slumping lifelessly against the wall.
Dante kicked the corpse aside, disarmed the explosive charge with steady, practiced hands, and punched his personal master code into the keypad.
The heavy door slid open.
Isabella stood there in the shadows, the iron IV stand raised high above her head, ready to strike until she recognized his silhouette against the crimson emergency lights.
The iron pole clattered to the floor.
“Dante...” she sobbed, collapsing forward as her water broke, pooling clear across the floor.
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Dante caught her in his arms, lowering her gently to the bed as the distant sounds of gunfire began to subside beneath the overwhelming roar of his own heart.
“I told you,” he whispered fiercely, brushing the sweaty hair from her forehead. “Nobody touches my family.”
