Chapter 6 - The Red Diner Floor
The deafening crack of the silenced pistol turned the air inside the diner into a blizzard of flying safety glass and pulverized ceramic.
I didn't hesitate. The moment the laminate table flew upward under my knees, I drew the Walther PPK from my inner jacket pocket, cocking the slide in a single fluid motion. The first gunman’s bullet buried itself deep into the vinyl booth cushion right where my chest had been a fraction of a second earlier.
“Stay down, Camille! Cover Sophie!” I roared over the hiss of escaping steam from the shattered coffee machine behind the counter.
Camille didn’t scream. Her survival instincts, forged in the ashes of the old world she thought she had escaped, kicked in immediately. She dragged Sophie off the bench, pulling the little girl flat against the sticky floor beneath the protective barrier of the heavy wooden table, her body shielding her daughter completely.
The second man in the trench coat entered the aisle, drawing his own weapon, shouting something in a guttural dialect I hadn't heard since the docks of Palermo.
I fired twice through the splintered wood of the upturned table.
The first round caught the lead gunman in the shoulder, spinning him off balance and driving him hard into a rack of potato chip bags. The second round missed, sparking blindingly off the chrome napkin dispenser.
“Marco!” I yelled toward the front entrance, knowing my shadow was out there.
Before the second gunman could recover his aim and level his barrel toward the floor where Camille and Sophie lay, the front glass door—already cracked by the blast—exploded completely inward. Marco stepped through the threshold with cold, ruthless precision. A suppressed submachine gun cleared the air with a swift, rhythmic stutter—*thip-thip-thip*.
The second gunman dropped instantly, hitting the linoleum with a heavy, lifeless thud.
Silence descended upon the diner, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator unit and the soft, terrified whimpers of Sophie echoing from beneath the table.
I kept my pistol raised, scanning the ruined room, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
“Clear,” Marco called out, his voice entirely devoid of adrenaline. He stepped over broken glass, his sharp eyes checking the corners. “Boss, we’ve got company coming. The sirens outside are less than two minutes away.”
I lowered the Walther, safety engaged, and slid it back into my holster. I vaulted over the flipped table and dropped to my knees beside Camille and Sophie.
“Are you hit?” I demanded, grabbing Camille’s shoulders, checking her arms and back with frantic urgency.
“I’m—I’m fine,” she breathed, her face deathly pale, her eyes wide with shock as she clutched Sophie tightly to her chest. “She’s untouched. She’s safe.”
Sophie’s red hair clips were slightly askew, and her gray-blue eyes were wide with a terror that a six-year-old had no business experiencing. She looked up at me, trembling.
“Alessandro,” she whispered. “What are those men doing?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, forcing my voice to remain steady, masking the absolute fury boiling inside my veins. “They’re gone, Sophie. It’s over.”
“We can’t stay here,” Marco urged, stepping closer, holding out a dark wool coat to drape over Camille’s shoulders. “The NYPD and Port Authority units are converging on this block. If the local police find us here with two dead syndicate enforcers, we won’t make it to a safehouse before the prosecutors hand down a federal indictment.”
I looked down at Camille. The fragile truce we had brokered across the coffee mugs just minutes ago had just been baptized in blood.
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“Get her and Sophie into the secondary vehicle,” I ordered Marco. Then I looked into Camille’s terrified, defiant eyes. “Do you trust me to keep her alive?”
Camille stared at me for one long, agonizing heartbeat. Then, she nodded once.
