Chapter 4 - The Trade
"Drop your weapons, Alejandro," Boss DeLuca said with a cold, yellow-toothed smile.
DeLuca was an old man with scarred skin and cold grey eyes, wearing a tailored cashmere coat that looked absurdly clean amid the smoke and blood filling the Moretti estate. He held my mother by the throat, the barrel of a chrome revolver pressed firmly against her temple.
Mama was weeping quietly, her hands shaking violently, but she kept her eyes fixed on me. "Emma... don't look..."
Alejandro lowered his assault rifle slowly, his jaw locked, every muscle in his body tense. "This is between you and me, Frank. Let the woman and the child walk. They have nothing to do with syndicate business."
"Oh, but they do!" Frank DeLuca chuckled darkly. "This little girl destroyed six months of planning. That poison was custom-synthesized in Russia. It cost me two million dollars, and she ruined it with a twenty-dollar plastic needle."
DeLuca shifted his glare to me. "I don't like my plans being ruined by ants."
"Take me," Alejandro said stepping forward, shielding me with his body. "You want the Moretti territory? You want the shipping docks? Take them all. Let them go."
DeLuca sneered. "You think you're in a position to negotiate? Look around you, Alejandro. Your house is burning. Your guards are either dead or on my payroll. You have nowhere left to run."
While DeLuca was talking, I reached slowly into my pink rabbit backpack.
My fingers felt around the small mesh pocket inside. There was one item left—not an EpiPen, but something else Dr. Vance had put in my bag earlier that day: a high-potency, needle-less emergency epinephrine nasal spray prototype, meant for ultra-fast absorption.
Beside DeLuca stood his chief lieutenant—a massive, hulking man holding the control detonator for the explosives they had planted around the mansion’s perimeter walls.
I looked at Alejandro. His eyes briefly flicked down to my hand in my bag. He understood instantly.
Alejandro suddenly lifted his hands in surrender. "Fine. You win, Frank. I’ll sign over the docks. Just give me the child."
"Bring her here," DeLuca ordered his lieutenant.
The giant lieutenant stepped forward, reaching out with a massive, gloved hand to grab my arm.
As soon as his face got close, I pulled the spray from my bag and aimed it straight into his open eyes and nostrils, slamming my thumb down on the plunger.
PFFFT!
The concentrated chemical compound hit him full force. The high-concentration epinephrine and saline violently burned his eyes and nasal passages. The giant shrieked in agony, dropping to his knees and dropping the detonator.
"NOW!" Alejandro roared.
In a split second, Alejandro kicked DeLuca’s knee with brutal precision. Bones cracked. DeLuca screamed, losing his grip on my mother.
Alejandro grabbed Mama’s arm, shoved her and me through the garden gate, and slammed the heavy iron door shut from the inside, locking it with the deadbolt.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Bullets slammed against the reinforced steel of the gate from the other side.
"RUN!" Alejandro shouted, pulling us down the dark stone stairs leading into the underground escape tunnel.
We ran through the pitch-black tunnel as the ground above us shook from distant explosions. The air was thick with dirt and cold moisture. My tiny legs felt like lead, but Mama carried me in her arms while Alejandro pressed a hand against his bleeding side—he had been grazed by a bullet during the chaos.
After ten agonizing minutes of running through the dark, we reached an iron ladder leading up to a trapdoor concealed inside an abandoned maintenance shed two miles outside the property.
Alejandro pushed the hatch open. Cool night air hit our faces.
Outside, a sleek black unmarked SUV was idling under the shadow of the trees. The driver’s side window rolled down.
Mama gasped and backed away.
May you like
Sitting in the driver’s seat was someone we never expected to see.
Hook: It was Dr. Vance—holding a blood-stained syringe, a cold smile on his face, and pointing a gun directly at Alejandro’s chest.
