Chapter 7 - THE ESCAPE
Nico dragged Carlo down the stone steps toward the underground wine cellar, Elena covering their rear with precise pistol fire.
They reached the heavy steel vault door of the safe room. Nico slammed his palm against the biometric scanner.
The steel door hissed open, revealing Margaret and Vittorio sitting inside amidst emergency communications gear.
"Nico!" Margaret gasped, standing up when she saw her son covered in soot and blood. Then her eyes fell on Carlo, who was clutching his bleeding face. "Carlo? What is happening?"
"Your brother-in-law sold us out eleven years ago, Mom," Nico said coldly, throwing Carlo onto the concrete floor of the vault.
Vittorio looked down at his brother with a sad, weary expression. "I hoped I was wrong about you, Carlo. I prayed for eleven years that you weren't the one who leaked the harbor routes."
"Shut up!" Carlo choked out from the floor, spitting blood. "You were a coward, Vittorio! You ran away to Switzerland while I stayed in the mud!"
"I stayed in Switzerland to keep you from killing my son!" Vittorio shouted, his voice cracking with old pain. "I knew if I stayed in New York, you would have put a bullet in Nico's back before his twenty-sixth birthday!"
Nico turned to Elena. "How many of Carlo's men are outside?"
"At least thirty," Elena reported, checking her tactical tablet. "They've surrounded the estate perimeter. We can't use the primary garage vehicles."
Nico walked over to a metal cabinet on the wall, pulling out an old blueprint of the property. He unrolled it across the steel table.
"The old coal tunnel," Nico pointed to a narrow line running beneath the southern wall. "My grandfather built it in 1950. It leads directly to the old boat house on the bay."
"It's caved in, Nico," Vittorio said, shaking his head. "It hasn't been used in forty years."
"It's not caved in," Margaret spoke up softly, stepping forward.
Everyone turned to look at her.
Margaret reached under her collar, pulling out a small brass key that hung beside her wedding ring.
"Your father thought he was the only one keeping secrets," Margaret said, looking at Vittorio with quiet strength. "For eleven years, while I let my hair grow, I spent every Tuesday afternoon paying maintenance crews to reinforce that tunnel. I knew a day would come when my son would need a way out."
Nico looked at his mother, a sudden surge of pride and love washing over him.
"You maintained the tunnel?" Vittorio asked, stunned.
"I kept my promise to you, Vittorio," Margaret said, her eyes burning with fierce determination. "But I protected my son."
Nico took the brass key from her hand. "Elena, get my father into the tunnel. Mom, stay right behind her."
May you like
"What about Carlo?" Elena asked, pointing her gun at the underboss on the floor.
Nico looked down at his uncle. "Zip-tie his hands to the steel pipes. If the mercenaries blow this vault, he can explain his master plan to them himself."
