Chapter 3 - The Price of Mercy
The bullet hit the wall an inch from my head, showering the hallway in plaster dust.
"Down!" I screamed, dropping Elena to the floor and shielding her with my body.
Harold and my detail swarmed the hallway, their weapons drawn. This was no coincidence. They had followed the girl. Someone had been waiting for her to lead them to me—or to Elena.
"Take them to the car!" I yelled at Harold.
"Sir, we need to extract you!"
"Take them!" I roared, firing back blindly toward the stairs.
I was pinned. The attackers were professional—silenced shots, tactical movement, coordinated fire. They wanted me dead, and they knew the emotional vulnerability of my past.
I looked back at Emma. She was cowering behind a doorway, her hands over her ears, her eyes wide with a terror that made my blood run cold. She was the weapon now. They weren't just here to kill me; they were here to break me by hurting the one thing that still felt like a heartbeat in my chest.
I moved with a savage, animal desperation. I didn't fight like a boss; I fought like a man who had lost everything once and refused to do it again. I slid across the linoleum, using the cover of a hallway radiator, and took out the first shooter with a clean, lethal shot to the neck.
But there were more.
I could hear the boots hitting the floorboards above me. They were flanking.
I made a split-second decision. I ran for the stairwell, baiting them. As I reached the landing, I pulled a small incendiary device from my jacket—a safeguard I had carried since the Bentley bombing—and tossed it into the room behind me.
The explosion was contained, a flash of blinding white light and heat that swallowed the hallway in flame. It was meant to give me seconds.
I sprinted toward the parking garage, my heart screaming. I reached the SUV, and Harold was already locking the doors.
"Go!" I yelled, diving inside as the vehicle tires screeched.
Elena was slumped against the window, unconscious, while Emma sat beside her, sobbing silently. I pulled the child into my arms, holding her tightly. She was shaking, her small body trembling against my chest.
"I’m sorry," I whispered, the words feeling foreign on my lips. "I’m so sorry."
"Will she be okay?" Emma asked, her voice broken.
"Yes," I said, a promise that felt like a suicide pact. "I will make sure of it."
But as we pulled onto the main road, my phone buzzed. A restricted number.
I answered, my voice a low growl. "I’m going to kill every single one of you."
"A bold claim for a dead man," a voice laughed on the other end. It was someone I knew. Someone from my own organization. "You think you can save the ghost, Dante? You think your past won't drag you into the grave? Give us the girl. And maybe we let the woman live."
May you like
My grip on the phone tightened until the casing cracked. "If you ever mention her name again, I will hunt you to the ends of the earth and pull your heart out while you're still breathing."
I hung up, looking at Emma, who had fallen asleep against my shoulder. The mole was closer than I thought. And now, they had everything they needed to finish the job.
