Chapter 4 - Ashes in Queens
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"412 Astoria Boulevard, Apartment 4B," Clara breathed, her fingers digging into the leather seat as the Maybach whipped across the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge at ninety miles an hour. "Please, hurry. He’s on crutches. He can't run."
Dante barked a string of rapid Italian into his phone, dispatching a secondary security team stationed in Long Island City. When he hung up, his expression was carved from granite.
"My men are four minutes out," Dante told her. "We’re six."
Those six minutes stretched into an eternity. Clara stared out the tinted window, watching the glittering Manhattan skyline give way to the rain-slicked brick tenements of Queens. Every red light they blew through felt like a countdown clock ticking toward zero.
"Why did Camilla do it?" Clara asked suddenly, needing anything to drown out the screaming panic in her head. "She had everything. Money, status, you."
Dante’s jaw flexed in the dim dashboard light. "Viktor Kael has been trying to muscle into the Red Hook shipping terminals for two years. I cut off his smuggling routes last month. Camilla’s gallery has been laundering money for Eastern European oligarchs behind my back—men loyal to Viktor. When I started auditing the port manifests last week, she realized it was only a matter of days before I connected the dots to her."
"So she tried to have you erased first," Clara murmured.
"People don't betray you because you give them nothing, Clara," Dante said, his dark eyes meeting hers. "They betray you because they think someone else will let them keep their secrets."
The Maybach screeched around the corner of Astoria Boulevard. Halfway down the block, outside Clara’s brick apartment building, two black sedans were double-parked with their hazards flashing—Dante’s advance team.
Wait—no.
Smoke was curling out of the fourth-floor window.
"Toby!" Clara screamed, lunging for the door handle before the car had even come to a complete stop.
Dante caught her around the waist, hauling her back against his chest as the vehicle skidded to the curb. "Stay in the car!"
"Let go of me! That’s our window! He’s in there!" She fought him like a wildcat, clawing at his tailored wool sleeves, blind with terror.
Before Dante could answer, the front door of the tenement burst open. Two of Dante’s men emerged through the swirling mist and sirens in the distance, half-carrying a pale, coughing teenager wrapped in a bedsheet, a pair of aluminum crutches clutched in one hand. Behind them, a third guard dragged a zip-tied man wearing a leather jacket.
"Clara!" Toby wheezed, his eyes wide with shock as Luca popped the back door open.
Clara scrambled out into the rain, throwing her arms around her brother’s trembling shoulders, burying her face against his soot-stained neck. "You’re okay. Oh God, you’re okay."
"They kicked the door in right before these guys showed up," Toby gasped, pointing a shaking finger at Dante’s crew. "They poured gasoline in the living room—"
Dante stepped out under the streetlamp, ignoring the torrential rain soaking his dark hair. He walked straight up to the kneeling, zip-tied Viper enforcer and crouched down until they were eye-to-eye.
May you like
"Tell Viktor," Dante said softly, "that the debt on the Vance boy is settled. And tell him that starting tomorrow morning, I’m burning every warehouse he owns between here and Jersey."
Dante stood up, adjusted his cuffs, and looked at Clara. "Get your brother in the car. Neither of you exists anymore."
