Chapter 17 - Descent into HellI couldn't just sit and watch Tommy fight for his life while Victor walked into a suicide mission.
As soon as Dr. Vance stabilized Tommy’s heart rate, I went to the armory. I stripped off my trench coat, strapped a Kevlar vest tightly to my chest, and loaded two 9mm glocks, sliding them into my holsters. I tied my hair back into a tight braid.
The maid was dead. The Queen was going to war.
I commandeered a motorcycle from the garage and tracked Victor’s GPS signal to an abandoned steel mill on the outskirts of the city—a rusted, sprawling nightmare of catwalks and blast furnaces. Dante’s final stronghold.
The snow was falling heavily as I cut the engine and slipped through a broken side door.
The interior of the mill was a terrifying maze of shadows and molten sparks. Gunfire echoed from the upper levels. Victor was already inside, fighting his way up.
I moved silently up the rusted metal stairs, taking out two of Dante’s guards with suppressed shots before they even knew I was there.
When I reached the central catwalk, suspended above a massive vat of boiling industrial slag, I froze.
Victor was on his knees at the end of the catwalk, bleeding heavily from a gash on his forehead, his weapons out of reach. Standing over him, holding a massive steel wrench and a revolver, was Dante.
"You always were too emotional, little brother," Dante laughed, kicking Victor brutally in the ribs. Victor groaned, spitting blood onto the metal grating. "You rush in like a knight in shining armor. That's why I will always be the true King of this family."
Dante raised the revolver, aiming it at Victor’s head.
"Drop it!" I screamed, stepping out of the shadows and leveling both my guns directly at Dante’s chest.
Dante turned, a look of genuine surprise crossing his face, followed by a dark, twisted grin.
"Well, well. The maid came to clean up the mess," Dante mocked. "Shoot me, Elena. But know that if I die, the remote detonator attached to my heart stops beating. It will trigger the bomb I placed beneath your brother’s hospital bed."
My finger froze on the trigger. The world stopped spinning.
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"He's lying, Elena!" Victor choked out, trying to rise. "Shoot him!"
"Am I?" Dante smiled, pulling back his collar to reveal a blinking surgical wire burrowed into his chest. "Take the risk, little bird. Pull the trigger and watch your brother burn."
