CHAPTER 12 THE NIGHT BOSTON BURNED
“Ninety seconds,” Julian repeated.
Aria looked at the hidden door.
Gunfire continued inside the dining hall.
“We have to warn them.”
“Luca sealed the main exits.”
“Then open this one.”
“The passage is too narrow for everyone.”
“Dante is in there.”
Julian caught her wrist.
“You cannot save him by dying beside him.”
Aria tore free.
“That is what everyone keeps deciding for me.”
She reached for the door.
Julian blocked it with his body.
Blood spread through the bandage beneath his shirt.
“Aria, listen.”
“No.”
Her voice broke.
“You listened to Victor for eight months.”
“You listened to Caleb.”
“You listened to every threat that told you I was safer without the truth.”
“I am done being protected by abandonment.”
Julian flinched as if she had struck him again.
Then he stepped aside.
“Thirty steps down this passage is a ventilation control.”
“If we reverse the old system, it may force smoke into the dining hall and trigger the fire suppression doors.”
“How does that help?”
“The doors divide the room into sections.”
“It may shield some of them from the blast.”
“Do it.”
“What will you do?”
“Open the door.”
Aria lifted the latch.
Julian disappeared into the darkness.
She counted backward from eighty in her head.
When she opened the secret panel, smoke and gunpowder filled the dining hall.
Two men lay motionless near the table.
Captain Caruso fired from behind an overturned chair.
Luca, Victor, Doyle, and several loyalists had retreated through the west doors.
Nico stood near the fireplace with his weapon aimed at Dante.
Marco lay across the table, blood beneath him.
Dante was on one knee, one hand pressed against his head.
“Nico,” Aria shouted.
Nico turned.
Dante lunged.
He struck Nico’s wrist and drove him into the wall.
The pistol fired into the ceiling.
Aria ran toward Marco.
His eyes were open.
His breathing came in wet, shallow pulls.
“The bullet entered high,” he whispered.
“Do not move me.”
“We have less than a minute.”
Dante disarmed Nico and slammed him against the fireplace.
“Where are the explosives?”
Nico laughed through split lips.
“Everywhere Angelo’s portrait hangs.”
Dante looked around the room.
Six portraits.
Six charges.
A heavy clang sounded as steel fire doors dropped from the ceiling.
Julian had reversed the ventilation system.
The room divided into three sections.
One door fell between them and the west exit.
Another trapped Luca’s remaining men near the far wall.
The third cut Aria, Dante, Marco, and Nico into the center section.
“Forty seconds,” Aria said.
Dante searched the portraits.
Wires ran behind the frames.
There was no time to disarm six devices.
He pulled Marco from the table despite the wounded man’s warning.
Aria dragged Nico by the coat.
“Leave him,” Dante said.
“No.”
“He tried to kill Marco.”
“He knows where Luca is going.”
Dante did not argue.
They moved toward the stone fireplace.
The old chimney was wide enough for a man to stand inside.
Dante shoved Nico into it, then lifted Marco against the rear wall.
Aria squeezed beside them.
There was no room for Dante.
“Get in,” she said.
“I will cover the opening.”
“With what?”
“My body.”
“No.”
“Aria.”
“No.”
She seized his shirt.
“I did not walk into this room to watch you choose death for me.”
The countdown in her head reached twelve.
Dante looked toward the overturned oak table.
He tore one solid panel from its base and braced it across the fireplace opening.
Then he forced himself inside, pressing Aria between his chest and the stone wall.
The first charge detonated.
The table panel bowed inward.
The second and third blasts merged into one enormous impact.
Stone fractured.
Heat rolled through the chimney.
Aria felt Dante’s arms tighten around her head.
Then the world became sound, pressure, and darkness.
When she opened her eyes, snow was falling through the missing roof.
The dining hall had become a field of burning wood and broken stone.
Dante lay partly over her.
Blood ran from his hairline and soaked the side of his shirt.
“Dante.”
He did not answer.
Aria touched his face.
“Dante.”
His eyes opened slowly.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
She laughed once, almost hysterically.
“You are bleeding through your clothes.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I am alive.”
“Good.”
His eyes closed again.
Marco groaned behind them.
Nico tried to crawl from the chimney.
Aria seized his ankle.
“You are not leaving.”
The explosion had opened the eastern wall.
Rossi men loyal to Dante entered through the breach.
Elena came behind them carrying a medical bag.
She ignored the fire, dropped beside Marco, and began treating the wound.
Dante was placed on a door used as a stretcher.
Aria walked beside him through the snow.
Outside, the entire estate burned.
But the fire did not remain at the estate.
Phones began ringing before they reached the vehicles.
A Rossi warehouse in Charlestown exploded.
A trucking depot in South Boston caught fire.
Two union offices were attacked.
A restaurant owned by Captain Caruso was riddled with gunfire.
Luca had planned the coup as a citywide purge.
By two in the morning, smoke rose from four neighborhoods.
News stations called it a gang war.
Police scanners called it coordinated terrorism.
Dante regained consciousness inside the mobile medical unit.
A fragment of stone had entered his side.
The surgeon warned that moving him could cause internal bleeding.
Dante tried to sit anyway.
Aria placed one hand against his chest.
“Stay down.”
His eyes opened fully.
“Luca has the ledger.”
“I know.”
“Victor has federal protection.”
“I know.”
“Marco?”
“In surgery.”
“Julian?”
“Missing again.”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
Aria added, “He saved us.”
“He also knew about the explosives.”
“He found the control system.”
“That does not answer how he knew the countdown.”
Aria had asked herself the same question.
Julian claimed he followed Luca’s men from the clinic.
But he had known the exact location of the bomb timer.
He had known the hidden passage.
He had known how the fire doors worked.
Dante reached for his phone.
Aria took it first.
“You cannot command a city from an operating table.”
“Watch me.”
“No.”
His gaze sharpened.
“Give me the phone.”
“No.”
The word left her without apology.
Dante stared at her.
Aria’s hand shook, but she did not surrender the device.
“You taught me that no should only need to be spoken once.”
A flicker of something almost proud moved through his eyes.
Then pain tightened his face.
“Luca will exploit every minute I am absent.”
“Then someone must be present.”
“Marco is wounded.”
“Caruso is under attack.”
“Nico is in custody.”
Aria looked toward the burning estate beyond the ambulance doors.
“I will do it.”
Dante became very still.
“You do not know this organization.”
“I know men who mistake fear for obedience.”
“That appears to be the central qualification.”
“This is not a committee hearing.”
“No.”
“People will die if you make the wrong decision.”
“People are already dying because Luca made his.”
Dante studied her face.
Aria continued.
“You can guide me.”
“I will not pretend to be you.”
“I will not order murders.”
“But I can hold the captains together until you survive surgery.”
A medic approached and insisted they had to leave.
Dante caught Aria’s hand.
This time the contact did not frighten her.
“Do not trust Captain Moretti,” he said.
“Elena’s brother?”
“He owes Luca money.”
“Caruso is loyal but impulsive.”
“Use Lydia for political channels.”
“Use Claire for federal contact.”
“Do not allow anyone to move the original archive copies.”
Aria nodded.
Dante’s grip tightened weakly.
“And do not let them put you in my chair.”
“Why?”
“Because the chair makes people believe they must become the worst man who sat there.”
The ambulance doors closed.
Aria watched it disappear into the snow.
Then she turned toward the surviving Rossi captains gathered beneath the burning portico.
Every face waited for someone to speak.
Some saw a frightened bride.
Some saw Victor Sterling’s daughter.
Some saw the woman blamed for weakening Dante.
Aria climbed onto the stone steps.
“The estate is lost,” she said.
“The organization is divided.”
“Luca expects you to choose between loyalty and survival.”
Captain Moretti folded his arms.
“And what do you expect?”
Aria looked at the smoke rising over Boston.
“I expect you to understand that Luca has already decided which of you will survive.”
She held up Nico’s phone, recovered from the dining hall.
It contained a list of targets.
Every captain present had a red mark beside his name.
Luca intended to kill them after using them.
The men began shouting.
Aria raised her voice.
“Listen to me.”
Silence came slowly.
“Tonight, no one attacks back.”
“Protect families, hospitals, and neighborhoods.”
“Move civilians away from every Rossi property.”
“Send evidence of Luca’s attacks to Claire Monroe.”
“We do not give him the war he needs.”
Captain Moretti stepped forward.
“You are not Rossi blood.”
Aria looked at the emerald ring.
“No.”
“I am the woman Luca tried to bury beside all of you.”
Caruso emerged from a vehicle with blood on his coat.
He looked at the target list.
Then he knelt on the snow-covered stone.
“For Dante,” he said.
One by one, other captains lowered their heads.
Moretti remained standing.
His phone vibrated.
Aria saw Luca’s name appear on the screen.
Moretti declined the call.
Then he knelt too.
For the first time in its history, the Rossi organization accepted an order from a woman who had never fired a gun at anyone.
Aria’s first command was mercy.
Luca answered by setting fire to the pediatric wing of a hospital funded by the Vale Foundation.
The patients escaped.
But inside the burned nurses’ station, firefighters found a message painted across the wall.
A QUEEN WHO WILL NOT KILL CANNOT KEEP A CROWN.
May you like
Below the words, Luca had drawn a red heart.
At its center was the name of Dante’s hospital.
