Chapter 6 - Iron and RainThe door didn't just open; it exploded inward, the brass hinges screaming as the wood splintered into a hundred yellow shards.
The first man through the frame was large, wearing a black trench coat with the collar turned up against the drizzle, a suppressed automatic already leveled at the center of the room. He never cleared the threshold.
Dante’s first shot took him through the throat before his boots had even hit the braided rug. The man dropped like a sack of wet salt, his weapon clattering across the floorboards toward the sewing machine.
"Flank!" a voice shouted from the landing—a high, panicked sound that belonged to someone who had spent more time counting money than handling iron. "He's inside! Get the window!"
A second shadow darkened the frosted glass of the fire escape door at the far end of the hall. The glass shattered in a sparkling cascade as a heavy boot kicked it through, followed by the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun.
Dante didn't hesitate. He vaulted the overturned table, sliding across the linoleum until his shoulder hit the wall beside the kitchen partition. As the second intruder swung his weapon through the broken frame, Dante fired twice through the lower half of the door.
A muffled cry of pain echoed from the metal landing outside, followed by the heavy, rolling sound of a body tumbling down the exterior iron stairs.
Silence descended on the apartment once more, broken only by the steady hiss of the radiator and the sound of Lily crying softly behind the kitchen curtain.
Dante remained crouched by the wall for three long seconds, his breathing even, his eyes scanning the smoking wreckage of the doorway. The third man—the one who had called out the flank—was gone. He had heard the second gun go off and the sound of his partner dropping five stories, and he had made the only intelligent decision left to him.
Footsteps retreated down the wooden stairs, fast and frantic, until they vanished into the steady roar of the rain outside.
Dante stood up slowly, lowering the hammer of his pistol and sliding it back into its holster. He brushed a splinter of yellow pine from the sleeve of his coat, his expression unreadable.
Elena pulled the floral curtain back. Her face was paper-white, and she was holding Lily so tightly against her chest that the child was gasping for air.
"Are they... are they gone?" she whispered.
"One is on the stairs," Dante said, his voice level. "The other is running down Fourth Street. They won't come back tonight. They thought they were collecting a debt from an old woman. They weren't prepared for an execution."
Elena let out a long, shuddering breath that seemed to empty her lungs of every ounce of air she had carried for five years. She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floorboards beside the overturned table, her arms still locked around her daughter.
"They found us," she said, her voice small and broken. "Even here. Even after all this time."
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Dante walked over to her. He didn't offer her his hand this time. Instead, he knelt down on the cold wood beside her, right where the rain from his coat was forming a small, dark puddle on the floor.
"They didn't find you," Dante said softly. "They found me. And I am very hard to lose twice."
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