Chapter 9 - The Breach at Dawn
A tear-gas canister bounced across the hardwood floor, thick white smoke instantly billowing into the dining hall.
"Down!" Dante shouted, leaping across the table, grabbing Elena and Ivy in his broad arms, and shielding their bodies with his own as heavy automatic gunfire shattered the remaining windows along the garden wall.
TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK!
Plaster rained down from the ceiling, crystal chandeliers shattering into thousands of pieces above them.
Argo didn't hide. The massive mastiff let out a ferocious bark, sprinting straight through the thick cloud of white smoke toward the broken window frame, where three men in black tactical gear were trying to breach the room.
A sickening scream echoed through the smoke as Argo’s heavy jaws locked onto the lead breach man’s shoulder, dragging him through the broken glass onto the floorboards.
"Mario! Lock the secondary doors!" Dante commanded, pulling a compact submachine gun from a hidden compartment under the sideboard table.
He stood up, his eyes cold and focused despite the burning tear gas in his lungs. He fired a controlled three-round burst through the smoke, dropping a second intruder who had stepped over the window frame.
"Elena! Take Ivy into the kitchen pantry! The door is reinforced steel!" Dante yelled, firing another burst to keep the remaining gunmen suppressed outside.
Elena didn't panic. The instinct of a woman who had survived the Narragansett massacre took over instantly. She grabbed Ivy against her chest, ducking low beneath the flying plaster, and sprinted toward the kitchen door.
"Mommy! Argo!" Ivy cried out, looking back through the white smoke.
Argo was standing in the center of the room, guarding the hallway archway, his body pinned between two fallen intruders, blood leaking from a graze on his left shoulder, but his stance remained unyielding, a literal wall of teeth and fury blocking access to the child.
Suddenly, a heavy iron boot kicked open the service entrance door behind the kitchen.
A tall, broad man with a heavy beard, a scarred face, and bloodshot eyes stepped out of the shadows, holding a heavy revolver pointed straight at Elena’s head.
Viktor Krol.
"Hello, little Elena," Viktor growled, a psychotic, triumphant grin tearing across his scarred face. "Did you really think Dante Castellani’s walls could keep me out forever?"
Elena froze, pulling Ivy behind her back, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. "Viktor..."
"I killed your father, I killed your husband, and now I’m going to end your bloodline right here on this nice kitchen floor," Viktor hissed, taking a slow step forward, raising the heavy hammer of his revolver with his thumb.
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"No!" Ivy shrieked from behind her mother’s skirt.
A shadow descended from the kitchen ceiling beam like a falling mountain.
