Chapter 6 - The Breakout at Seaport
The heavy vault door creaked open six inches, smoke pouring through the narrow gap.
Matteo immediately shoved Penny behind him, pulling a compact 9mm pistol from his shoulder holster with fluid, lethal speed.
“Stay low,” he growled.
Through the smoke, a figure squeezed through the opening, coughing violently.
It wasn't Marcus Vance.
It was Leo, covered in drywall dust, holding a heavy tactical torch and a smoking thermal cutter.
“Boss!” Leo barked, ducking low. “Vance’s team brought heavy weapons into the lobby! We took down four of them, but the tactical team from the police is two minutes away!”
“Where’s the exit route?” Matteo demanded, grabbing his coat from the stool and wrapping it around Penny’s shoulders.
“Sub-level two boiler room,” Leo said, handing Matteo a secondary magazine. “We blew the lock on the service elevator. The car is waiting in the delivery tunnel.”
Matteo grabbed Penny’s hand, his grip tight and unyielding. “Keep moving. Don't stop for anything.”
They sprinted out of the vault into the destroyed basement corridor. Wall panels were shattered, water pipes were leaking steam into the hall, and the distant sound of police sirens echoed down from the street above.
As they reached the heavy steel doors of the boiler room, a voice shouted from the darkness of the main corridor.
“VALE!”
Marcus Vance stepped out from behind a concrete pillar, holding an automatic shotgun. His gray suit was torn, his eyes wild with desperate rage.
“You don't walk out of here with that ledger, Matteo!” Vance screamed, leveling the barrel.
Before Vance could fire, Penny’s survival instincts took over. She grabbed a heavy, brass fire extinguisher mounted on the wall beside her and threw it with all her strength directly at Vance’s legs.
The heavy extinguisher smashed into Vance’s shin with a brutal crack. Vance gasped in pain, his shot going wide and blowing a massive hole into the ceiling plaster overhead.
Matteo didn't hesitate. He raised his pistol and fired two precise shots into Vance’s chest.
Vance collapsed onto the wet concrete floor, his weapon clattering uselessly away.
Leo shoved the boiler room door open. “GO! NOW!”
They burst into the underground delivery tunnel, where a reinforced black van was waiting with its rear doors swinging open. Matteo hoisted Penny inside, leaped in behind her, and yelled, “DRIVE!”
The van tore out of the dark tunnel just as three marked Boston Police cruisers screeched into the bank entrance above, their red and blue lights flashing against the rainy windows.
Inside the bouncing van, Penny collapsed against the padded wall, her chest heaving as she clutched her father’s notebook to her stomach.
Matteo knelt in front of her, his hands checking her arms, her legs, her shoulders for any injuries. “Are you hit? Did the plaster strike you?”
“I’m fine,” Penny gasped, letting out a wild, breathless laugh. “I... I threw a fire extinguisher at an assassin.”
Leo, sitting in the front passenger seat, turned around with wide eyes. “That was a forty-pound unit, kid. You hit him right in the kneecap.”
Matteo looked down at her, a low, rich chuckle breaking from his chest—a sound so warm and genuine it transformed his hard face entirely.
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“You are remarkable, Penny Hayes,” Matteo said, his eyes glowing with fierce pride.
Penny looked up at him, her heart doing a dangerous, fluttering flip that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the man sitting before her.
