Chapter 8 - The Gun on the Terrace
Driven by pure, unhinged animal desperation, Lorenzo suddenly lunged forward from the floor, grabbing a hidden ceramic boot-knife from his ankle sheath.
He scrambled toward the grand marble staircase, his eyes wild with homicidal madness as he locked his sights onto Elena and little Maya on the balcony.
“If I’m going down, Dante, I’m taking Marcus’s bloodline with me!” Lorenzo shrieked, bounding up the first four steps with the knife raised.
The entire ballroom screamed in terror as the guests scrambled away from the stairwell.
Elena did not flinch; she immediately stepped in front of Maya, shielding her four-year-old daughter with her own body, ready to take the blade to protect her child.
Dante did not draw a weapon; he exploded across the floor with the speed of a charging predator, covering thirty feet in less than two seconds.
He vaulted onto the staircase landing, intercepting Lorenzo mid-stride and grabbing the commissioner by his throat with his bare left hand.
The ceramic knife fell from Lorenzo’s paralyzed fingers, clattering harmlessly down the marble steps.
Dante lifted the two-hundred-pound commissioner completely off his feet with one arm, holding him suspended over the twelve-foot drop of the grand staircase.
Lorenzo choked, his face turning dark purple as his legs kicked frantically in the empty air, his hands clawing uselessly at Dante’s iron grip.
“You dared to raise a blade against a mother and child under my roof,” Dante whispered, his voice vibrating with the absolute authority of an avenging god.
“You stole fourteen months of this child’s life, made her watch her mother scrub floors, and laughed while they starved in the dark.”
“Dante… mercy…” Lorenzo wheezed, his eyes rolling back in his head as his oxygen supply was cut off.
Dante looked up at the balcony, meeting little Maya’s wide, innocent eyes.
Maya looked at the man dangling from Dante’s hand, then looked at her mother, who gently placed a hand over her daughter’s shoulder.
“Uncle Dante,” Maya’s sweet, clear voice drifted down the marble staircase.
“Mommy says we don't hurt people when they are already defeated.”
Dante froze.
The words of the four-year-old child sliced through the blinding red haze of his homicidal fury, pulling his soul back from the edge of the abyss.
Slowly, with breathtaking discipline, Dante lowered Lorenzo back onto the marble landing, slamming him face-first onto the steps.
Dante drove his knee into Lorenzo’s back, twisting his arms behind him with the sharp, metallic snap of heavy tactical handcuffs.
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“You owe your life to Marcus Vance’s daughter, Lorenzo,” Dante growled, pinning the traitor to the stone.
“Because if it were up to me, you would already be at the bottom of the Long Island Sound.”
