Chapter 68 - Crossfire in the Catacombs
Elena recovered instantly, scrambling backward behind the console, leveling her suppressed pistol directly at Dante.
“Shoot him!” Elena shrieked at the guards.
The mercenary holding Mateo drew his sidearm, but Dante moved with terrifying, superhuman speed. The shotgun in his hand roared, echoing like thunder in the enclosed cistern. The heavy slug struck the guard squarely in the chest, lifting his two-hundred-pound frame off his feet and throwing him backward into the abyss.
As the guard fell, he dropped Mateo.
“MATEO!” I screamed, diving headfirst across the slick steel platform.
My fingertips grazed the edge of the blue fleece blanket just as it cleared the railing. I threw my entire body over the metal bar, the steel biting brutally into my ribs, reaching down into the freezing void.
My fingers clamped onto Mateo’s collar.
The weight of his falling body yanked my shoulder with blinding agony, threatening to pull me over the edge into the black water fifty feet below.
“Laura, hold on!” Dante yelled.
Automatic fire from the second guard chewed into the catwalk. Dante charged straight into the hail of bullets, taking a round to his tactical vest, grunting as the kinetic impact forced him back a step. He raised his sidearm and fired three rounds through the guard’s throat and visor. The man collapsed like a sack of stones.
Above us, Elena fired two shots from behind the obsidian console. One bullet ricocheted inches from Dante’s skull, the other grazing his left arm.
“Hold him, Laura! I’ve got you!” Dante dropped his weapons and skidded across the platform on his knees, throwing his powerful arms around my waist just as my grip on Mateo began to slip.
With a ragged, desperate heave, Dante hauled both of us backward onto the grated floor. I pulled Mateo into my chest, ripping the cloth gag from his mouth.
“Mommy! Daddy!” Mateo sobbed hysterically, burying his face in the crook of Dante’s neck, his small arms wrapping around his father’s blood-spattered collar.
Dante pressed a fierce, trembling kiss to Mateo’s temple, his eyes burning with unshed tears. “I’ve got you, buddy. Daddy’s here. Daddy’s never letting go.”
He turned his gaze to me, his jaw clenching, his eyes filled with a raw, agonizing remorse that tore through all my doubts. “Laura... I swear to you, I didn't know about Sofia. I didn't know who you were when I married you. I fell in love with a girl sitting on a fire escape in Chicago. That was the only truth in my entire cursed life.”
Gunfire ceased, replaced by the rhythmic, mocking clap of leather gloves.
We looked up. Elena was standing at the emergency override terminal across the broken catwalk, holding a small digital detonator in her hand. The blood from a shrapnel cut on her forehead dripped down her cheek, painting her smile in crimson.
“How touching,” Elena sneered, her voice dripping with poison. “A reunion of ghosts. You fought your way through my army, Dante. Truly magnificent. But you forgot one fundamental rule of our world: the house always wins.”
Elena pressed a sequence on the terminal.
The console let out a series of high-pitched, rhythmic beeps. The holographic display flashed bright, emergency red:
*STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY BREACH: SUBTERRANEAN LAKE WATER GATES OPENING IN 60 SECONDS.*
A deep, groaning mechanical shudder tore through the mountain. Above us, massive iron sluice gates began to grind upward. The roaring sound of millions of gallons of glacial Lake Como water poured into the upper tunnels, threatening to submerge the entire crypt in seconds.
“Elena, you madwoman!” Dante shouted, rising to his feet, shielding Mateo and me behind him. “You’ll drown yourself!”
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“I have an auxiliary escape pod behind the blast vault,” Elena smiled, backing toward a reinforced steel doorway. “You three will remain here, forever locked in your ancestors’ tomb. Goodbye, Laura. You were always too weak to rule.”
***
