The realization slams into my chest with the force of a battering ram. She is not running. She is staying. The tactical armor breaks, leaving nothing but terrifying devotion.
But the tactical assessment is not finished. The silence in the hotel is too deep. The victory is too easy.
Bellanti foot soldiers do not operate in a vacuum. They are a hive mind. If four men came up the elevator, more are waiting below. And someone had to coordinate the strike. Someone had to know the location of the Grand Continental. Someone had to know I brought her here.
Only Matteo knew I took the armored SUV. Matteo is blood. Matteo would rather carve out his own heart than betray me.
The Bellantis have ears in the city. They have eyes on the streets. But this hotel is off the grid. It is a ghost property hidden behind three layers of shell corporations. Finding us here required precise intelligence. It required a leak.
The elevator machinery groans again. Deep down in the shaft. The sound echoes up through the empty corridors. The screech of rusted metal tearing against the tracks.
The car is moving down.
"Fuck," I spit. I surge to my feet, dragging Gemma up with me. "We have to move."
"More of them?" she asks, grabbing my arm.
"The car is descending. They are sending it back down to pick up a second wave. Or they rigged it with explosives to blow the supports and drop the entire floor into the lobby." I scan the room. "We cannot stay here."
"The stairwell?" She points toward the hallway.
"Trapped. If they sent a team up the shaft, they have the exits covered. The stairs are a fatal choke point." I walk toward the shattered window. The cold Chicago wind whips into the room, scattering the plaster dust. I look down at the street below. Fourteen stories of sheer limestone facing. No ledges. No fire escapes. A straight drop to the concrete.
"Dante," Gemma says, stepping up beside me. She looks out the window, her breath catching in the freezing air. "We can't fly."
"No." I turn away from the window. I look at the king bed. I look at the velvet drapes, rotting at the hems. I look at the dead Bellanti soldiers bleeding out in the hallway.
The options calculate in my mind with brutal efficiency. Stay and fight a war of attrition against an unknown number of hostiles. Die defending a fixed position. Or take the one path they will never expect. The one path that requires insane risk.
I walk over to the pile of my discarded clothes. I pull a spare black shirt from my tactical bag over my head, hiding the blood and the bullet graze. I grab my tactical rig and strap it over my shoulders. I load a fresh magazine into the Glock and holster it at my hip. I pick up the combat knife and slide it back into my boot.
I turn back to Gemma. She is watching me with that fierce, unwavering trust. It is the most terrifying and beautiful thing I have ever witnessed.
"How much do you trust me?" I ask, walking toward her.
"I'm still here, aren't I?" she shoots back. The sass returns, a brilliant flash of defiance in the dark.
I close the distance between us. I cup her face in my bloody hands. I do not care about the mess. I tilt her head back, forcing her to look directly into the feral obsession burning in my eyes.
"We are leaving this room," I say. "We are walking past the bodies. We are going to the elevator shaft."
Her eyes widen slightly. "The elevator is gone. It's going down."
"Exactly." I lean down, my lips brushing against her ear. The scent of sweet orange and warm cumin fills my lungs, giving me the strength to drag us both through hell. "We are going to open the doors. And we are going to climb down the cables in the dark."
She shivers. Not from the cold wind howling through the broken window. From the sheer madness of the plan.
"Okay," she whispers fiercely. "Let's go into the dark."
I pull her closer as we reach the rusted steel doors of the shaft. The gap between them is narrow. I wedge my fingers into the crack, ignoring the burn on my left palm. The muscles in my back scream as I force the doors apart. The abyss opens before us. Cold, damp air rushes up from the pitch-black depths. Grease and ancient dust coat the steel cables suspended in the void.
"Do not look down," I say, wrapping my arm securely around her waist.
"I'm looking right at you," Gemma replies.
I nod once. I don't look back. The Costa war just escalated.
And I am going to burn their entire fucking empire to the ground.
