Chapter 9 - HELD AT GUNPOINT AT THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF: "CHOOSE THE WOMAN OR THE HEIR"
Before Dante’s guards could react, Marco’s hand moved with lightning speed.
He pulled a hidden pistol from his jacket, grabbed Leo who was playing on the carpet near the doorway, and backed violently out toward the glass doors leading to the cliffside terrace!
“Don't fucking move!” Marco screamed, pressing the cold steel barrel against six-year-old Leo’s forehead.
Leo cried out in panic, dropping his plastic dinosaur onto the tile. “Papa! Maya!”
Dante’s face turned into a mask of pure death. He drew his weapon, but Marco was using Leo as a human shield, backing toward the edge of the terrace where the cliff dropped two hundred feet into the churning ocean below.
“I made a deal with Valenti!” Marco spat, his eyes wide with wild desperation. “Valenti offered me half the territory! You were soft, Dante! You let a penniless waitress into your house! You risked the whole empire for a bastard kid!”
“Release the boy, Marco,” Dante said, his voice terrifyingly quiet. “I will let you walk to the fence before I hunt you down.”
“No!” Marco shrieked. “You make a choice right now! Put your gun on the ground and step off the cliff, or I blow this kid's brains out and toss his body into the waves!”
My heart stopped beating. The wind tore across the terrace, howling over the drop of the cliff.
Dante slowly lowered his gun toward the ground. “Take me,” Dante said softly. “Let the boy go.”
“No!” I shouted.
I didn't think. Just like the night at Lumina—just like every moment since my son had been returned to my life—thinking was a luxury I refused to afford.
I grabbed a heavy iron candleholder from the terrace table beside me and launched myself forward not at Marco, but directly into Dante’s path, violently shoving Dante sideways!
BANG!
Marco’s gun fired, the bullet clipping my shoulder, tearing through my skin! But the force of my movement created a split-second distraction.
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Leo ducked naturally under the noise. In that fraction of a second, Dante didn't hesitate. He dropped to one knee, pulled a second hidden derringer pistol from his boot, and fired a single, flawless shot through Marco’s throat.
Marco gasped, dropping his weapon, and stumbled backward over the low stone wall, plunging silently into the dark, roaring abyss of the ocean below.
