Chapter 10 - The Burning Altar
The world seemed to drop out from beneath my feet.
“My apartment?” I gasped, stumbling up from the sofa so fast the crystal bourbon glass wobbled and crashed onto the Persian rug. “My mother’s old photographs... her papers... everything I have left is in that building!”
Gabriel didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second. The exhaustion and the pain from his newly operated shoulder vanished behind an instantaneous, volcanic wave of lethal focus.
“Carmine, mobilize the heavy transport units. Full tactical gear,” Gabriel commanded, his voice cracking like a whip across the room. He reached down, scooped up his heavy wool coat from the armrest, and slung it over his shoulders, checking the slide of his revolver with a sharp, metallic snap.
“Boss, if Rossi’s men are burning her place, it’s a trap,” Carmine argued, stepping forward. “They know she survived the pier. They’re smoking her out.”
“I know it’s a trap,” Gabriel said coldly, his dark eyes locking onto mine with an unyielding intensity that promised absolute devastation to anyone standing in our way. He grabbed my arm, pulling me toward the private elevator at the back of the study. “Which is why we’re going to be waiting for them when they strike the match.”
Within four minutes, a heavy black armored SUV was screaming out of the Bank Street gates, its engine roaring through the empty, rain-slicked avenues of the lower west side.
As we turned the corner onto Maple Street where my modest, six-story tenement building stood, the horrifying reality came into sharp focus.
A wall of thick, oily black smoke was billowing out of the second-floor windows, licking hungrily against the brick facade. Two unmarked black sedans were parked haphazardly across the curb, their doors standing wide open as three tactical-clad operatives carrying red gasoline canisters backed out of the front entrance.
“There,” I whispered, pressing my face against the passenger window, my heart shattering as I watched the flames consume the only home I had left.
Gabriel’s SUV didn't slow down.
Instead, the driver slammed down on the accelerator, roaring straight toward the curb with the engine screaming like a wounded beast, directly cutting off the operatives' escape route before they could reach their cars.
The heavy steel bumper of the SUV smashed into the side of the lead sedan with a deafening screech of crumpled metal and shattering glass, pinning the men against the brick wall of the alley.
The passenger door of our vehicle flew open before the vehicle had even fully stopped.
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Gabriel stepped out into the rain and the swirling smoke, his heavy wool coat billowing behind him like the wings of a dark angel, his nickel-plated revolver leveled squarely at the chest of the lead operative.
“Tell Victor Rossi,” Gabriel rasped, his voice echoing over the roar of the burning building, “that his housecleaning service is fired.”
