Chapter 21 - The Bullet Meant For My Child
“One.”
The word did not finish vibrating through the radio before Dante moved with the ferocity of a wounded god. He didn’t raise his weapon to fire into the wall of blinding light; he threw his entire six-foot-three frame over the double bassinet, locking his arms around the aluminum frame and burying Clara and Mateo beneath his broad, armored chest.
*CRACK.*
A high-caliber sniper round tore through the pressurized glass of the helicopter’s windshield. The shockwave blew inward with the force of a detonating grenade, showering my skin with thousands of diamond-sharp glass needles. The smell of scorched ozone and copper hit my tongue instantly.
“Dante!” I screamed, throwing my body over his, claws digging into the heavy Kevlar vest strapped beneath his ruined tuxedo.
A dull, wet thud registered beneath me. Dante let out a low, guttural roar that rattled his ribcage against mine. The bullet had sheared across his shoulder, tearing a ragged trench through muscle and flesh before lodging deep into the titanium bulkhead behind our heads. Blood—hot, thick, and smelling unmistakably of salt and iron—splattered across the white receiving blanket swaddling Mateo.
“Down! Stay down, Lena!” Dante spat blood onto the floor, his pupils blown wide with pure, unadulterated adrenaline.
Our pilot, bleeding heavily from cuts across his forehead, slammed both hands down onto the cyclic stick. The dual turbines screamed in agony as he yanked the aircraft into a violent, stomach-churning lateral roll. Outside, tracer rounds painted streaks of emerald and ruby across the black belly of the storm clouds. The four matte-black gunships opened fire simultaneously, chewing through the concrete lip of the penthouse helipad, sending chunks of stone raining hundreds of feet down onto the illuminated pavement of Michigan Avenue below.
The baby monitor in my trembling hand screeched with white noise, punctuated by the terrified, synchronized wails of our twins. Mateo’s cries were sharp, furious, demanding air. But Clara—my sweet, delicate Clara—sounded faint, her breathing turning into a wet, rattling wheeze that pierced straight through my soul.
“She’s turning pale!” I sobbed hysterically, pulling her against my chest while Dante hauled himself upright, his left arm dangling limp and soaked in crimson. “Dante, look at her! What did they do to her?”
Through the shattered canopy, Chicago was a spinning carousel of neon lights and dark lake water. Our pilot banked sharply over the Chicago River, using the glass canyons between skyscrapers to break the target lock of the four pursuing gunships. The air howling through the broken cabin was freezing, whipping my tangled hair across my tear-streaked face.
Dante reached into his tactical pouch with his good hand, pulling out a military-grade satellite jammer and slamming it into the auxiliary console. He grabbed my jaw with fingers slick with his own blood, forcing me to look into eyes that held nothing but bottomless, terrifying wrath.
“Listen to me, Lena,” he rasped, his voice dropping below the roar of the screaming turbines. “My father didn’t just choose that fertility clinic. He financed it. The Castiglione family... they are an old European syndicate that controls pharmaceutical patents and sovereign wealth trusts through illicit biological lines. My father traded our firstborn daughter’s genetic code to buy off the debt Vance Global incurred thirty years ago.”
My heart plummeted into an icy abyss. “They made me carry their weapon?”
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“No,” Dante snarled, cocking the slide of his pistol against his knee with a ruthless click. “They made you carry our daughter. And I will burn the entire continent to ashes before they lay a single finger on her.”
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