Chapter 7 - Blood On The Balcony
The sound of the high-caliber round was not a single noise. It was a whip-crack that ripped the air apart, followed instantly by the wet, violent thud of a slug excavating a chunk of solid cherry paneling behind Nina’s empty chair.
Glass rained over the wool carpet like hail.
Alex’s body was an immovable shield of muscle, tailored wool, and absolute calm pressed down over Nina, flattening her against the floorboards behind the heavy desk. The smell of burning ozone and pulverized drywall filled the dark room.
"Don't lift your head," Alex murmured, his mouth touching her hair. He wasn't panting. His voice had the flat, lethal cadence of a predator assessing wind speed and trajectory. "Heavy rifle. Long-range perch. Probably the abandoned grain silo across the channel."
A second round tore through the shattered window frame, shrieking through the ceiling plaster and sending down a white blizzard of dust.
Nina dug her fingers into the lapels of his suit, her forehead pressed into the hollow of his collarbone. She could feel the hard, geometric lines of his spare magazines strapped beneath his ribs. "The flash drive," she gasped, plaster flakes coating her tongue. "The drive with the chemical manifests is still plugged into the dock—"
"Forget the drive."
"If they blow that desk apart, we lose the only leverage keeping you out of a federal penitentiary!"
Alex shifted his weight slightly, looking down into her wide, panicked eyes in the faint gray wash of harbor light spilling through the ruined glass. The sheer, irrational defiance in her voice made something sharp and unreadable spark behind his gaze.
"You're lecturing me on evidence preservation while under sniper fire, Nina?"
"I’m an accountant," she hissed, adrenaline searing through her veins. "I don't leave audits incomplete!"
"Keep your head between your knees."
Alex slipped his hand from beneath her shoulders, drew his weapon, and reached blindly up over the edge of the mahogany desk. His fingers found the slim metal housing of the drive, snapped it free from the USB port, and pulled it back down into the shadows. He shoved the drive straight into the small breast pocket of Nina’s ivory blouse, his knuckles brushing the racing heat of her pulse.
"Keep it against your ribs," he ordered. "Now move."
He didn't give her time to think. Keeping his left arm wrapped securely around her waist, Alex dragged her across the glass-strewn floor toward the heavy double doors leading to the private emergency stairwell. Above them, three more rounds systematically pulverized the upper bookcases, sending leather-bound legal volumes showering down in shredded tatters.
They reached the reinforced steel door. Alex kicked the release bar; the heavy fire door slammed shut behind them, cutting off the howl of the harbor wind.
The concrete stairwell was lit only by the faint red glow of emergency exit signs.
"Boss!"
Footsteps pounded up from the landing below. Dante appeared around the turn, carrying an MPX submachine gun, three heavily armed tactical guards flanking him with rifles raised.
"Building power is dead from the basement substation," Dante reported rapidly, not lowering his weapon. "They hit the backup generators with an incendiary charge from the alley. We’ve got two vans pulling into the underground garage right now."
"Salvatore Moretti isn't running an extortion racket anymore," Alex said coldly, stripping off his ruined suit jacket and letting it fall to the concrete. He wore only his crisp white shirt, the dark leather harness holding two Sig Sauer pistols strapped across his wide chest. "He knows the chemical manifests exist. He’s trying to level the building to burn the paper."
"We move to the roof?" Dante asked. "Helipad is clear."
"Roof is exposed to the channel sniper," Alex said. "We go down. Clear the lower executive parking bay. We cut through the commercial tunnel under the docks."
"Understood." Dante motioned to the two men. "Form up!"
Alex grabbed Nina’s hand. His grip was tight, his fingers interlocking with hers with a fierce, bone-crushing possessiveness that left no space between them.
"You stay on my heels," Alex told her, his eyes locking onto hers in the crimson wash of the exit light. "You don't look back. You don't let go of my hand. If I tell you to drop, you drop flat. Understand?"
"Understood," she whispered.
They descended at a sprint. Four flights down, the smell of cordite and burning rubber drifted up through the ventilation shafts. At the twenty-fourth floor landing, the heavy fire door swung open with a violent metallic bang.
Two men in black tactical gear and Kevlar vests stepped onto the platform, weapons raised.
Alex fired before their barrels cleared the doorway.
Three suppressed shots punched through the chest plates of the first man, dropping him instantly. The second shooter dove backward into the corridor, firing a wild burst of automatic fire that gouged chunks of concrete from the wall inches above Nina’s head.
Alex didn't retreat. He lunged forward through the doorway, grabbed the second shooter’s barrel with his bare left hand, wrenched it downward, and drove the heel of his palm upward into the man's throat. The sickening snap echoed in the tiled hallway. Alex caught the dying man before he hit the ground, ripped a spare magazine from his vest, and tossed the spent casing aside.
It took four seconds. Smooth, clinical, horrifying.
Nina stood on the threshold, chest heaving, the metallic tang of blood catching in the back of her throat.
Alex turned back to her. His knuckles were raw, a streak of crimson marking his forearm where hot brass had grazed the skin. He looked entirely in his element—a creature forged in the dark mechanics of war, utterly divorced from the man who had lazily leaned against her Dorchester doorframe asking for cheap whiskey.
He held out his hand.
"Still with me, Nina?"
She looked down at his outstretched palm, coated in soot and blood, then up at his dark, unblinking eyes. Her world had collapsed in seventy-two hours. Her apartment was gone, her quiet life was in ashes, and she was carrying a piece of encrypted plastic that half the underworld wanted to turn to dust.
She took his hand. Her grip didn't waver.
"I’m still with you."
May you like
A faint, lethal curve touched the corner of Alex's mouth. He pulled her flush against his chest, shielding her body with his own as Dante and the security team swept the corridor ahead.
"Then let's go finish the Morettis," he said.
