Chapter 67 - The Traitor in the Bloodline: The Uncle Who Sold the Cradle
The shockwave from the bunker-buster munition dropped from the sky above blew out the reinforced glass observation wall of the surgical suite, hurling Claire and Dante to the floor in a hail of tempered glass and powdered concrete.
Through the deafening ringing in her ears, Claire didn't search for a weapon. She scrambled on her hands and knees toward the shattered bassinet.
"Leo!" she screamed.
The infant was crying, his small lungs screaming with terror as dust coated his pale cheeks, but the heavy steel lip of the reinforced crib had shielded him from the falling debris. Claire scooped him into her arms, tucking him beneath the front flap of the ceramic plate carrier Dante had strapped onto her chest.
Through the gaping crater in the ceiling where three floors of the luxury estate had collapsed, black smoke swirled under the rotors of an MH-60 Black Hawk hovering directly above the ruins. Fast-ropes dropped through the smoke, and within seconds, heavily armed men in sterile, unbadged combat gear slid down into the ruins of the lower level.
Marco was already firing, kneeling behind a ruined granite island, his Kalashnikov chattering in short, rhythmic bursts that dropped two of the operators before a flashbang grenade bounced against his boots.
*BANG!*
The blinding flash knocked Marco sideways, sending his rifle clattering across the slick floor. Three operators immediately converged on him, pinning him to the ground with combat boots on his neck and the muzzles of their suppressed rifles pressed against his temples.
"Hold your fire!" a voice echoed through the ruined corridor.
It wasn't Valeria’s voice.
It was an older voice, thick with an Old World Italian accent, measured, aristocratic, and sickeningly familiar.
From behind the phalanx of private commandos stepped an elderly man wearing an immaculate charcoal cashmere coat over a tailored three-piece suit. He carried a silver-topped walking cane, his silver hair combed back with meticulous precision.
Dante, dragging himself up against the surgical table with a heavy combat shotgun clutched in his hands, froze. His knuckles turned gray against the receiver.
"Uncle... Bernardo?" Dante choked out, coughing up a mouthful of dark blood.
Bernardo Moretti—the elder statesman of the Five Families, the man who had stood beside Dante at his father’s funeral, the man who had held Leo at his baptism—stared at his nephew with a look of cold, patronizing pity.
"You look terrible, Dante," Bernardo said softly, tapping the tip of his silver cane against the broken glass. "You always were too sentimental for this family. Your father was the same way. He thought an empire could be sustained on honor and loyalty. But an empire requires evolution."
"You..." Dante’s voice was a ragged snarl of disbelief and pure, murderous hatred. "You gave Valeria the coordinates to this bunker. You gave her the access codes to the rail siding."
"Valeria Vance is an visionary, Dante," Bernardo replied smoothly. "The Directorate offered our family something far greater than five boroughs of gambling dens, labor unions, and hijacked cargo containers. They offered us a seat at the table of the new global architecture. All they required was the biological host to calibrate the Aegis satellite array."
He turned his gaze toward Claire, his cold eyes sweeping over the young woman clutching the infant to her chest.
"And you," Bernardo said with a dry, mocking chuckle. "The rogue sister. The ghost who thought she could escape the nursery. You should have stayed dead in Langley, my dear. It would have saved us the trouble of scraping your remains off this floor."
Bernardo raised his walking cane. With a subtle click, he twisted the silver handle, revealing the integrated suppressed barrel of a high-caliber assassination weapon. He leveled it directly at Claire’s forehead.
"Give me the child, Claire," Bernardo said. "Or I put a round through your eye, and I peel him off your dead body myself."
Claire didn't step back. She pulled Leo tighter against her chest, her hand slipping down to the combat knife strapped to her thigh. "You touch this baby, and I swear to God I will rip your throat out with my bare teeth."
"A touching sentiment," Bernardo sneered, his thumb sliding the safety off the cane’s firing mechanism. "Goodbye, Miss Vance."
Before Bernardo’s thumb could depress the release, Dante roared.
He didn't use the shotgun. He threw himself forward, his massive frame colliding with Bernardo’s knees, sweeping the old man off his feet with a bone-shattering crash against the concrete.
The cane weapon discharged, the round tearing through the ceiling tile above Claire’s head.
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"CLAIRE! THE HUDSON GATE! RUN!" Dante screamed, his bare hands locking around his uncle’s throat, squeezing with every ounce of life left in his dying body as the surrounding commandos began firing into his back.
***
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