Chapter 2 - The Fire in the Glass Tower
Dante did not step aside.
He reached inside his charcoal jacket, pulling a custom, matte-black Kimber .45 from its shoulder holster in a single motion so clean it looked rehearsed. He leveled the muzzle straight between Silvio’s pale eyes.
"Take one more step across my threshold, Uncle," Dante whispered, his voice dropping into sub-zero granite, "and I will paint that wall with your pedigree."
The penthouse corridor froze in an electric, breathless vacuum.
Outside, sixty floors above Manhattan, the afternoon rain turned to hail, lashing against the floor-to-ceiling glass panels overlooking Central Park.
Silvio’s smile did not entirely vanish, but the silver serpent head in his palm trembled by a fraction of a millimeter.
"You are threatening your father’s brother for a maid, Dante?" Silvio murmured, though he did not advance.
"I am defending my house from a traitor who bypassed my perimeter security," Dante replied.
He tapped a small titanium button on the cuff of his left sleeve.
Behind Silvio, from the service alcoves and the emergency stairwell doors, six armed men in sterile black tactical gear materialized like phantoms. Marco Bellini—Dante’s chief enforcer, whose face was lined with old shrapnel scars—stood at the head of the team, his suppressed carbine aimed directly at the back of Silvio’s lead gunman.
"Weapons on the marble," Marco commanded, his voice cold and flat as slate. "Now."
Silvio’s two guards looked at the six red laser dots painting their chests. Slowly, carefully, they unzipped their coats, dropped their submachine guns onto the black floorboards, and raised their empty hands.
Silvio turned his head, surveying the ambush with icy disgust.
"You think you've won this corridor, Dante?" Silvio sneered, looking back at his nephew. "Your father built this syndicate on blood treaties with the European shipping lines. When the Commission learns that you've compromised the Port Newark terminals to play savior to a girl from Queens, they won't send an uncle to negotiate. They will revoke your charter."
Silvio turned on his heel, his cane clicking sharply against the stone.
"Keep her close, Dante," Silvio called back over his shoulder as the elevator doors opened once more. "Because when a man buys a woman's soul, he usually pays with his own."
The steel doors closed.
The lift began its sixty-floor descent.
The corridor fell into an absolute, suffocating silence, broken only by the hum of the air handlers and the drumming of the hail against the glass.
Dante lowered his weapon, sliding it back beneath his jacket.
He didn't look at Marco. He didn't look at the discarded weapons on the floor.
He turned to face me.
My knees finally gave out. I hit the marble floor, my back sliding down the wood paneling of the hallway, my hands clutching my apron to keep from weeping in front of seven men with rifles.
"Emma," Dante said, stepping toward me.
"Don't touch me!" I choked out, slapping his hand away as he reached down. "Don't you dare touch me! You used my mother's illness as a pawn in your syndicate war! You paid that hospital to trap me!"
Dante slowly lowered himself onto one knee in front of me on the cold floor.
May you like
He was inches away. I could smell the expensive cedarwood, rain, and clean gunpowder clinging to his clothes.
"I didn't pay the hospital to trap you, Emma," Dante said, his dark eyes holding mine with an intensity that made the breath catch in my throat. "I paid it because four hours ago, Silvio Marchetti bought your mother’s debt from the collection agency. He was going to use her dialysis access to force you to plant a cyanide capsule in my espresso tomorrow morning."
