Chapter 6 - Shadows on the Border
The front windshield of the silver sedan exploded outward in a hail of automatic gunfire.
The deafening roar of a submachine gun ripped through the quiet harbor, shattering the serene rhythm of the waves. Splinters of wood and chunks of wet gravel erupted around us.
Dante didn't hesitate. He tackled me around the waist, throwing his entire weight over my body as we slammed into the muddy earth behind Walter’s heavy oak lumber stack. The impact knocked the wind from my lungs, but Dante’s body formed a solid iron shield above me.
*Crack-crack-crack!*
Dante returned fire from beneath his coat, his customized Kimber .45 barking three measured, terrifying rounds. Down the driveway, a man screamed in pain, followed by the sound of metal crunching against stone.
“Who are they?” I gasped, coughing as the scent of cordite and wet sawdust burned my throat.
“Moretti’s hitters,” Dante hissed between clenched teeth, peering around the edge of the lumber pile, his face a mask of cold, tactical calculation. “They followed me from Boston. Sal Moretti knew if he took me out away from my territory, the Caruso empire falls by morning.”
“They followed *you* here!” I cried, terror and fury warring in my chest. “You brought your war to my doorstep!”
“I brought myself to you!” he snapped back, reloading with a smooth, terrifying efficiency that only comes from years of surviving street wars. “Elena, listen to me. There are three of them. One is down. The other two are moving along the boathouse wall. When I start shooting, you run for the tree line behind the shop. Don't look back. Don't stop until you hit the highway.”
“No!” I gripped his lapel, my fingers digging into the soaked wool. “They’ll kill you, Dante!”
Even in the middle of a firefight, Dante stopped. He looked down at me, his hazel eyes wide with a strange, fierce light.
“You still care,” he whispered, a ghostly smile touching his lips. “Even now.”
“I don't want you murdered in front of me, you arrogant idiot!”
“Good enough for me,” Dante said. He leaned down, his wet lips pressing hard, fiercely against my forehead—the exact kiss he used to give me eight years ago before heading out to protect our tiny Queens apartment. “Run, Elena.”
He broke cover.
Dante stepped straight into the line of fire, bellowing a curse in Sicilian that echoed like thunder across the water. His gun fired twice, dropping a gunman advancing along Walter’s porch.
The third shooter, crouched behind the engine block of the silver sedan, swung a tactical shotgun toward Dante’s chest.
I didn't run.
My instincts, honed by weeks of working with heavy iron restoration tools, took over before my brain could scream at me to flee. Beside the lumber pile lay a three-foot iron crowbar Walter used to pry open shipping crates. I grabbed the iron bar, lunged through the mud behind the shooter who was entirely focused on Dante, and swung with everything I had.
The solid iron connected with the man’s shoulder and neck with a sickening crunch.
The shooter yelled in agony, dropping the shotgun into the dirt. Dante fired one clean shot into the man’s center mass, ending the threat instantly.
The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the hiss of the sedan’s punctured radiator and the heavy thud of raindrops on dead leaves.
I stood there, gasping, the iron bar slipping from my trembling, muddy fingers.
“Elena...” Dante breathed, turning toward me.
Then his knees buckled.
May you like
He collapsed into the mud, his hand clutching his left side where blood—dark, thick, and arterial—was already pooling through his charcoal coat.
***
