""Mister, Don’t Open That Gift!"" The Maid's 5-Year-Old Whispered—What the Mafia Boss Found Inside Left 200 Guests Frozen in Pure Terror!

Dante breached the gantry floor just as Vance’s security chief turned to reload his carbine. With a savage sweep of his rifle barrel, Dante knocked the weapon aside, drove his combat knife through the man's tactical vest, and hurled the dying mercenary over the railing to the concrete floor fifty feet below.

Vance panicked. Pulling a compact pistol from his trench coat, he fired wildly, one bullet clipping Dante’s left bicep, tearing through flesh and fabric.

Dante didn't even slow down.

He closed the distance in two strides, grabbing Vance by the throat and slamming him violently against the industrial control console. The billionaire’s pistol clattered to the steel grating below.

""Turn it off,"" Dante growled, pressing his thumb into Vance’s carotid artery until the CEO’s eyes bulged with terror.

""I... I can't!"" Vance gasped, clawing desperately at Dante's iron fingers. ""The protocol... it's locked with an encrypted key! Only the central server at my headquarters can abort the countdown!""

Dante looked at the digital display: 00:04:15... 00:04:14...

Down below, Nico and Leo Romano rushed to the steel canisters, frantically examining the electronic valves. ""Boss! The manual overrides are welded shut! If this system purges, we're all dead!""

Dante glanced around the gantry. His eyes fell upon a heavy industrial crane hoist suspended above the chemical tanks, capable of lifting twenty-ton rail cars. Right beside the control console was the emergency crane release lever.

""Leo!"" Dante shouted down. ""Open the blast doors to the underground drainage canal beneath Track Nine! Now!""

Leo sprinted to the canal control box, throwing his entire body weight against the ancient iron wheel. With a groaning screech of rusted metal, a massive subterranean floodgate beneath the warehouse floor began to grind open, revealing the raging, deep torrent of the Chicago River diversion canal swelling from the storm.

Dante looked back at Vance, whose face was purple with asphyxiation. ""You stole from soldiers' widows. You murdered honest men. And you tried to poison my family.""

""I have money... billions!"" Vance choked out, tears of terror streaming down his face. ""In Zurich... Grand Cayman... take it all, Moretti! Just let me live!""

""Money can't buy back what you took from Mateo Alvarez,"" Dante whispered into his ear.

With his wounded left arm, Dante grabbed Vance's belt, lifted the billionaire off his feet, and threw him directly onto the crane's automated freight cradle. Dante then smashed the crane's release switch with his rifle butt.

The massive steel hoist plunged downward, carrying Vance and all three chemical canisters in a catastrophic cascade of shattered chains and screaming metal. They crashed directly through the floorboards into the subterranean canal.

A split second later, the digital timers hit zero.

Beneath thirty feet of raging river water, deep inside the concrete drainage caverns, the canisters ruptured. The synthetic gas, designed for air dispersion, reacted violently with the millions of gallons of churning water, instantly hydrolyzing into an inert, harmless saline byproduct before it could ever touch the atmosphere.

Gregory Vance's screams were swallowed instantly by the roaring, freezing black water of the underground canal, washing him away into the depths of Lake Michigan, never to be seen again.

Silence fell over Warehouse Fourteen, broken only by the steady dripping of rain from the shattered skylights.

Dante leaned against the gantry rail, breathing heavily, clutching his bleeding arm. Down below, Salvatore Romano looked up through the drifting smoke, slowly lowering his shotgun.