Chapter 23 - The Architect of Our Sins
“They’re here,” I breathed, pulling the pin on Clara’s transport carrier to engage the silent-lock mode.
Dante forced himself to a seated position against the cold iron beam. His skin had taken on a gray, waxy pallor, but his jaw was set like granite. He reached into his tactical belt and produced a thumb-sized black cylinder—a military-grade thermite charge.
“Take the kids,” Dante said, handing me the cylinder and Julianna’s burner phone. “There is an old service elevator at the end of this catwalk. It bypasses the building’s main network. It drops directly into the abandoned subway tunnels beneath Michigan Avenue.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I said, surprising myself with the ferocity of my words.
I hated him. I hated him for the lies, for the scent of gardenia perfume that had broken my heart, for the five years of deception that had turned my life into a battlefield. But looking at his shattered body, I knew that if he died here, the truth died with him. And without the truth, my children would be hunted across the globe until there was nowhere left to hide.
“Lena, you have to,” Dante rasped, his vision swimming. “I can’t run. I’ll only slow you down. If they capture me, they get nothing. But if they get Clara—”
“We go together, or we die together on this concrete,” I said, grabbing his good arm and hauling it over my shoulders. “You owe me five years of honesty, Dante Vance. You don’t get to check out early and play the martyr.”
He gave a dry, wheezing laugh that ended in a cough of blood. “God… you always were more ruthless than my entire board of directors.”
With Dante leaning heavily on me, his weight threatening to collapse my knees at every step, we dragged the double carrier down the narrow metal catwalk. Above us, the steel door of the filtration unit groaned under the pressure of a hydraulic ram.
*BANG.*
The metal warped.
*BANG.*
The heavy steel bolts sheared off with the sound of gunshots. A squad of four men dressed in matte-gray composite armor dropped through the opening, their assault rifles raised, tactical lights slicing through the gloom.
“Target located,” the lead commando announced into his throat mic. “Male subject compromised. Female subject carrying the asset. Terminate the mother. Secure the child.”
I didn't hesitate. I turned, slammed the elevator call button with my elbow, and jammed the thermite cylinder into the electrical junction box beside the shaft door.
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“Dante, brace!” I screamed, throwing my body over the children’s pod as the cylinder hissed white-hot fire, melting the elevator panel into a blinding, spitting inferno.
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