Chapter 6 - Into the Deep Vault
Dante didn't hesitate. Rather than pursuing Thorne down the emergency stairs, he dove back into the shattered bedroom. He scooped Leo into his left arm and hauled the wounded Marcus to his feet with his right.
""Move!"" Dante ordered.
They scrambled through the open panel behind the bookshelf into the estate's emergency service shaft. Dante hit the primary seal button. The four-inch-thick blast door slid shut with a pneumatic hiss, locking five heavy steel bolts into place just as a catastrophic shockwave rocked the mansion.
BOOM.
The vibration was so violent it threw them all against the reinforced concrete wall of the descending hydraulic lift. Ceiling dust showered over them as the muffled sound of collapsing stone echoed from above. Leo buried his face into Dante’s chest, weeping silently as his father held him with crushing intensity.
The lift descended fifty feet below ground level, stopping at the subterranean bunker built during the Cold War.
Dante set Leo down on a stainless steel medical cot and immediately turned to Marcus, ripping open a trauma kit to pack the gunshot wound in his operative’s shoulder. His hands moved with surgical calm, despite the blood dripping from his own forearm.
""The house is gone, boss,"" Marcus groaned through gritted teeth as Dante tied a tourniquet. ""All our surveillance grids, the communication hubs... fried.""
""The stone will hold,"" Dante said coldly. ""The foundation is granite. Thorne wanted me trapped down here while he seizes the transit lines.""
Leo walked forward slowly, wiping tears from his grimy cheeks. He looked up at Dante's bleeding arm. ""Daddy... you're hurt.""
Dante paused. He knelt down so he was eye-level with his son, his expression softening completely. He placed his warm, calloused hand on the boy's cheek. ""Scratches, Leo. Only scratches. Look at me. Are you whole?""
Leo nodded bravely, swallowing a sob. ""I didn't let him take me. I remembered what you said.""
""Good boy,"" Dante whispered, a faint smile breaking through his grim exterior. ""You did well. But now, we must finish this.""
Dante walked over to an auxiliary console and keyed in a manual override sequence. A single green monitor illuminated the dimly lit bunker, revealing an encrypted naval radar screen. A red transponder blipped three miles off the harbor coast.
""Thorne's private freighter,"" Dante murmured, his eyes narrowing. ""The Leviathan. Julian gave him the ledger codes, but the final transfer requires biometric authorization from my personal server—which just went offline.""
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""Which means,"" Marcus said, breathing heavily, ""he can't access the funds unless he captures you alive, or hacks the sub-sea fiber terminal at the harbor.""
Dante grabbed a tactical vest and two spare magazines from the gun rack. ""He won't get the chance. We take the offensive.""
