Chapter 8 - The Siege of Mercer Island
The glass doors of the terrace shattered inward as shockwaves rattled the entire mansion.
Luca reacted instantly, grabbing my waist and pulling me down behind a heavy stone pillar just as machine-gun fire began chewing through the exterior walls.
"ALBERTO MORETTI!" Dante shouted over the deafening noise. "HE CAME HIMSELF! THREE CONVOYS AT THE FRONT GATE!"
Don Alberto Moretti—the seventy-year-old king of the Chicago mob—had not accepted his son's humiliation. He had brought his entire personal army to Seattle, executing a desperate, scorched-earth assault on Luca's home.
"EMMA!" I screamed, panic clawing at my throat as smoke began rising from the lower gardens.
"Dante! Get Ava and the child to the panic room under the wine cellar!" Luca commanded, pulling two heavy pistols from his shoulder holsters.
"No! I'm not leaving you!" I cried out, grabbing his jacket sleeve.
Luca looked into my eyes, his face a terrifying mask of lethal determination, yet his gaze on me was fiercely tender.
"Listen to me, Ava," Luca said, pressing a hard, fast kiss to my lips that left me breathless. "I built this house to withstand a war. You take Emma, you lock the titanium door from the inside, and you do not open it for anyone except me. Do you understand?"
"Luca, please—"
"GO!" he roared, turning toward the hallway and firing three rapid shots into the smoke as the first wave of Chicago hitmen crested the grand staircase.
Dante grabbed my arm, half-dragging me down the service stairs into the basement level.
We found Mrs. Chen holding a weeping Emma near the entrance of the reinforced wine cellar.
"Mama!" Emma sobbed, throwing her arms around my neck as I dropped to the concrete floor.
"I've got you, baby, I've got you," I gasped, holding her tight against my chest as the ground shook above us from repeated explosions.
Dante punched a six-digit code into a heavy steel keypad on the wall. A massive, ten-inch-thick titanium door slid open with a heavy hydraulic hiss.
"Get inside! Now!" Dante ordered, pushing us into the bunker.
"Dante, go help him!" I begged, looking back at the dark hallway as the sound of heavy gunfire echoed from the floor above.
"My orders are to guard this door, Signorina," Dante said, his face set like concrete. "If Don Luca falls, my job is to get you three onto a boat at the private dock behind the bunker."
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"He won't fall," I said, my voice trembling with a fierce, absolute belief I didn't know I possessed. "He won't leave us."
Dante looked at me, a profound respect flashing in his eyes. He hit the lock button, and the heavy titanium door sealed shut with a deafening, airtight thud, cutting off the sounds of the war above.
