Chapter 12 - Blood is Thicker, Bullet is Faster
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Clara didn't wait to die.
The instant Enzo’s knuckle whitened on the trigger, she grabbed the heavy brass lamp and hurled it directly at his head while diving sideways behind the massive mahogany desk.
Thwip! Thwip!
Two suppressed rounds chewed into the leather executive chair where she had been standing a split second earlier, sending feathers and shredded hide into the air. The brass lamp clipped Enzo’s shoulder, knocking his third shot wide into the bookshelves.
"Bitch!" Enzo snarled, rounding the corner of the desk with murder in his pale eyes.
Clara scrambled backward across the Persian rug, her emerald silk skirt tangling around her legs as Enzo raised the Beretta point-blank at her face.
The hidden paneling behind the bookshelves exploded outward.
BANG!
The deafening roar of an unsuppressed .45 echoed through the study. Enzo jerked violently as a crimson bloom erupted through his right wrist, sending the Beretta spinning across the hardwood floor.
Dante stepped out of the panic room passage behind the bookcase, smoke curling from the barrel of his matte-black handgun, his eyes burning with a fury straight out of hell.
"Hello, Uncle," Dante said softly.
Enzo collapsed to his knees, clutching his shattered wrist as blood poured between his wrinkled fingers onto the rug. Luca burst through the main study doors a second later, weapon drawn, securing the fallen Beretta.
Dante didn't even look at Enzo yet. He walked straight to Clara, holstering his weapon with one hand while hauling her effortlessly to her feet with the other. His hands framed her face, his thumbs sweeping over her cheeks as his dark eyes frantically scanned every inch of her.
"Are you hit?" Dante demanded, his voice rough and raw in a way she had never heard before. "Clara, look at me. Did he touch you?"
"I'm okay," she breathed, her hands coming up to grip his strong wrists, grounding herself against his warmth. "Just the chair. The Kevlar didn't even get tested."
Something fierce and unguarded flickered in Dante’s gaze. He pressed his forehead briefly against hers, exhaling a ragged breath, before turning slowly to face the bleeding man on his rug.
Enzo glared up at him, chest heaving, blood staining his teeth as he spat onto the floor. "You’ve gone soft, Dante! Your father would be ashamed of you! Throwing away forty years of family blood for some gutter waitress—and refusing to expand into Viktor’s heroin routes!"
"My father made me swear on his deathbed to keep narcotics off our docks," Dante said, towering over his uncle like an executioner. "You didn't betray me because I went soft, Enzo. You betrayed me because you couldn't stand taking orders from your brother’s son."
Enzo let out a bitter, wheezing laugh. "You think the virus on that phone is going to stop Viktor? He already knows you switched the drives! Why do you think I came up the shaft myself?"
Dante’s eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"
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"Viktor never trusted the waitress to turn on you!" Enzo rasped triumphantly. "The midnight phone call was a distraction to keep your best men here at the tower and down at Pier 40! Viktor’s main strike team just hit the Brooklyn Navy Yard where your shipment of weapons is docked!"
Luca’s radio crackled to life at his belt right on cue—static followed by distant gunfire and shouting: "Mayday! Pier 4 is under heavy fire! We need backup now!"
