Part 3: The Streets of Fire
The two lead enforcers behind Vincent collapsed without a sound, their blood blooming darkly across the cream marble.
Vincent scrambled backward into the hallway, his face entirely drained of color as the heavy doors slammed shut, automatically locking him out.
The alarms downstairs began to wail, a distant, rhythmic screaming that signaled the beginning of the end.
I turned back to Alara, who was on her knees, her hands over her ears, weeping silently amidst the lace of her ruined dress.
I knelt down beside her, ignoring the blood filtering under the door frame.
— Can you walk? I asked, my hands steady as I pulled off her heavy diamond necklace.
She looked up at me, her eyes searching my face for the cruelty she had come to expect from powerful men.
Finding none, she nodded slowly.
— Romano, take her to the safe house in Cicero, I ordered, standing up and pulling a custom Kimber .45 from the hidden drawer beneath the television console. Use the service elevator. If anyone looks at her wrong, erase them.
— What about you, Boss? Romano asked, checking his magazine.
— I have a birthday party to attend, I said, my eyes turning to the reflection of the city in the glass.
Thirty minutes later, my armored Escalade tore through the iron gates of the Voss estate in Lake Forest.
The mansion was completely dark, save for the flickering light of a single television in the study.
Victor Voss was sitting in his leather armchair, a half-empty bottle of gin in his trembling hand, when I kicked the oak door off its hinges.
He jumped up, the bottle shattering on the floor as he saw the blood on my cuffs.
— Dante! he gasped, backing away until his spine hit the mahogany bookshelves. What... what are you doing here? Where is Alara?
— She is exactly where you can never hurt her again, Victor, I said, walking toward him with a slow, predatory stride.
— I had no choice! he whimpered, falling to his knees as he saw the weapon in my hand. Caruso was going to kill my entire board of directors! He was going to take the ports anyway! I just wanted to save the company!
— You sold your daughter to a sadist to protect your profit margins, I whispered, pressing the cold steel of the barrel directly against his sweaty forehead.
— She’s just a girl! Victor screamed, tears streaming down his wrinkled face. You can have the shipping lanes! I’ll sign them over right now!
— You don't own them anymore, Victor, I said, my finger tightening on the trigger. The Moretti family took them ten minutes ago.
The gunshot echoed through the empty mansion, a single, sharp punctuation mark at the end of a legacy built on cowardice.
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I didn't look back as I walked out into the rain.
The real target was still breathing, and Vincent Caruso had thirty years of entrenched power protecting him in the downtown core.
