Chapter 6 - The Lion at the Gates
The heavy steel elevator doors at the end of the fourth-floor corridor slid open, revealing six men clad in tactical body armor, carrying suppressed MPX submachine guns. They were DeLuca’s elite hit squad—ruthless mercenaries hired to ensure no witnesses survived the night.
They stepped out in a tactical wedge formation, their weapon lights cutting through the smoky, dim corridor.
"Target is in Bay 4," the lead gunman signaled with two fingers. "Execute the woman, retrieve the doctor's files, plant the incendiary charge."
From the shadows twenty feet away, a voice colder than the grave answered them:
"You took the wrong contract."
Before the lead mercenary could swing his barrel toward the sound, Dante stepped from behind a concrete support pillar. The muzzle of his .45 roared with deafening fury in the enclosed hallway. The first bullet took the lead gunman directly through the throat, severing his spinal cord and sending him crashing to the floor in a spray of dark crimson.
Panic erupted. The mercenaries opened fire, spraying the corridor with high-velocity 9mm rounds. Glass medical cabinets shattered, drywall exploded into dust, and fluorescent light fixtures sparked and plummeted from the ceiling.
Dante moved with the terrifying speed and lethality of a seasoned warlord. He dropped into a combat slide beneath the hail of lead, coming up behind an overturned steel gurney. He fired three consecutive double-taps. Two more hitmen collapsed, bullets tearing through their unarmored collars and eye sockets.
"Flank him! Flank him!" the remaining team leader screamed, reloading behind a nurse's station.
Dante didn't wait to be flanked. He vaulted over the steel gurney like a panther, closing the distance before the nearest operative could seat his fresh magazine. Dante grabbed the man’s rifle barrel, shoving it upward toward the ceiling as it discharged, then drove a combat combat blade deep into the mercenary’s armpit, piercing straight through to the lung.
The man let out a wet choke and slumped over. Dante used the falling body as a human shield, absorbing a burst of fire from the two remaining gunmen, before firing through his own shield's shoulder, dropping the fourth attacker with a headshot.
Only the team leader remained. Out of ammunition, the mercenary dropped his rifle and drew a serrated tactical knife, his eyes wide with desperate terror.
"DeLuca paid us ten million!" the man yelled, backing toward the elevator. "You're too late anyway, Moretti! DeLuca’s second team already hit the pharmacy warehouse! The antitoxin Isabella needs is destroyed!"
Dante walked slowly toward him, his face streaked with blood, none of it his own. His eyes burned with an ancient, unforgiving malice.
"You think Salvatore DeLuca is my only enemy?" Dante asked, his voice a low rumble. "You think I didn't store a private medical cache at the Navy Pier facility three years ago?"
The mercenary lunged forward with a desperate, wild slash toward Dante’s jugular.
Dante stepped inside the attack with effortless grace. He caught the man’s wrist, twisted it until the radial bone snapped with a sickening crunch, and drove his knee directly into the man’s sternum, shattering his ribs. As the mercenary fell to his knees gasping for air, Dante grabbed him by the hair and leaned down.
"Tell Salvatore I’m coming," Dante whispered into his ear.
Then, with a swift, merciless twist, Dante snapped the man’s neck. The body collapsed lifeless onto the linoleum.
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Dante wiped the sweat and blood from his eyes, his breathing heavy. Behind him, through the reinforced glass of Operating Room 3, the heart monitors were screaming.
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