Chapter 8 - The Ghost of the Past
The illusion of safety shattered three nights later with a deafening explosion that shook the foundations of the Biscayne Bay villa.
I jolted awake in the dark, the screech of shattering glass echoing through the bedroom. Alarms blared instantly, filling the air with a piercing, red-flashing emergency strobe.
Dante was already out of bed, grabbing a Heckler & Koch submachine gun from the concealed wall safe with practiced, lethal speed. His face was carved from absolute ice.
“Stay behind me,” Dante ordered, shoving a heavy ceramic vest into my arms. “We’ve been compromised.”
“How?” I gasped, pulling the vest over my silk pajamas as the sound of automatic gunfire echoed from the front courtyard. “This place was off the grid!”
“A ghost doesn't need an address to find its grave,” Dante growled, pulling me toward the private panic room embedded behind the master closet.
Before we could reach the heavy steel door, the bedroom door splintered inward under the force of a massive, explosive breach. Shrapnel flew across the room, and three heavily armed tactical operatives wearing black ski masks poured through the smoke, weapons raised.
Instinct—honed by four months of brutal training with Marcus—took over completely.
I didn't freeze. I dropped to the floor, rolling behind the heavy mahogany dresser just as a hail of submachine-gun fire chewed through the wall where I had been standing a second earlier.
Dante returned fire with terrifying precision. Two shots, two targets down. The third operative lunged forward, his knife flashing in the strobe lights, aiming directly for Dante’s blind spot.
“Dante!” I screamed.
I scrambled up from behind the dresser, grabbed a heavy brass lamp, and hurled it with all my strength across the room, smashing it directly into the attacker’s side. He staggered, distracted for a fraction of a second.
That fraction was all Dante needed. He pivoted, burying the butt of his weapon into the man’s temple, sending him crashing unconscious to the floor.
Silence descended on the master bedroom, broken only by the whining alarm and the hiss of smoke from the blown doorway.
Dante stood over the unconscious intruder, breathing heavily, before turning his gaze toward me. He looked me up and down, checking for blood, his eyes wide with a mix of shock and fierce pride.
“You didn't hide,” he breathed, stepping across the debris to grab my shoulders.
“You taught me well,” I panted, my hands shaking slightly from the adrenaline crash.
Marcus burst into the bedroom a second later, his rifle raised, followed by two members of the security detail. “Boss! Perimeter breached from the water. We neutralized the landing party on the dock, but—!”
“Find out who sent them,” Dante commanded, his voice dropping into a lethal, terrifying whisper. He pulled a zip-tie from an operative’s tactical vest, tossed it to Marcus, and pointed at the conscious prisoner groaning on the floor. “Strip him down, check his encrypted comms, and trace the frequency. I want a name in five minutes.”
It didn't even take five minutes.
Marcus returned to the study thirty minutes later while Dante and I stood by the reinforced windows watching the coast guard patrol boats sweep the dark waters of the bay.
“We traced the comms, boss,” Marcus said, laying a blood-stained tactical radio on the desk. “It wasn't a rival syndicate. And it wasn't a random hit squad.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed. “Then who?”
“It was Julian Vance’s inner circle,” Marcus reported grimly. “Before Vanessa and Julian were arrested, they set up a dead-man’s switch through a third-party contractor in South America. Even locked behind federal bars, they had a contingency fund waiting. They hired a black-ops mercenary unit to finish what the car crash started. They wanted you dead, boss... and they wanted the girl eliminated as a loose end.”
A heavy, suffocating silence filled the study.
I looked at Dante. The shadows on his face mirrored the darkness of the night outside. The war we thought we had won in the boardroom in Chicago wasn't over. The venom of our enemies was still reaching out from behind federal prison walls to destroy us.
“They think they can touch us,” Dante murmured, his voice dangerously low. He picked up his weapon from the desk, checking the clip with a metallic click. “They think federal prison is going to keep them safe from the consequences of their actions.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked, stepping up beside him and placing my hand gently over his clenched fist.
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Dante looked down at me, the ice in his eyes melting slightly as he covered my hand with his own.
“We’re going back to Chicago,” Dante said, his voice ringing with absolute, unyielding finality. “We’re going to cut out the rest of the rot, once and for all.”
