Chapter 8 – The Stairwell

“They’re coming up the service elevators!” Luca shouted, tossing the medical kit aside.

He grabbed two spare magazines from the hall closet and slapped one into his pistol.

“We can’t stay here,” Luca said, turning to Anna. “Get Mom and Noah. We’re taking the fire escape to the roof. The helicopter is fueled.”

Anna didn’t waste a second. She ran to the back bedroom.

I rushed to help Marco off the blood-stained sofa. He groaned, leaning heavily against my shoulder.

“I’m slowing you down,” Marco wheezed, his face pale and sweating. “Leave me, Luca. Take the key and go.”

“I didn’t bury you once just to leave you to die for real,” Luca snarled, throwing Marco’s good arm over his massive shoulder.

Anna emerged from the hallway with Elena and Noah.

Noah was clutching a stuffed dinosaur, his eyes wide with fear, but he wasn’t crying. He held his mother’s hand tightly.

Ding.

The sound of the private elevator arriving at our floor echoed through the silent apartment.

“Move!” Luca roared.

We ran to the heavy steel door of the emergency stairwell just as the main elevator doors slid open.

I looked back.

Five men in tailored grey suits stepped into our penthouse, carrying suppressed submachine guns.

The leader, a man with a vicious scar across his cheek, locked eyes with me just as Luca slammed the heavy steel stairwell door shut and threw the deadbolt.

A barrage of bullets immediately hammered against the steel, deafening us in the narrow concrete stairwell.

“Up!” Luca ordered. “To the roof!”

We scrambled up the concrete steps. Marco was struggling, his breathing shallow and ragged. I pushed from behind while Luca pulled him up.

Elena was incredibly fast for a seventy-six-year-old woman, fueled by pure adrenaline, keeping pace right behind Anna and Noah.

We reached the heavy metal door to the roof.

Luca kicked the crash bar open.

The cold Chicago wind whipped across the sprawling flat roof.

Sitting on the helipad, blades already spinning, was Luca’s private black helicopter. The pilot waved frantically for us to hurry.

“Go, go, go!” Luca shouted over the roar of the rotors.

Anna lifted Noah into the back seat and climbed in beside him. Elena followed.

Luca practically threw Marco into the cabin, then turned back to me.

“Come on, Bella!” Luca yelled, reaching out his hand.

I ran toward him.

But before I could grab his hand, the stairwell door burst open with a deafening crash.

The Bellini hitmen flooded onto the roof.

“Get down!” Luca roared, pushing me violently to the deck as he raised his gun.

Gunfire erupted.

Sparks flew off the helicopter’s armor plating.

Luca fired back with terrifying accuracy, dropping two of the hitmen instantly.

“Take off!” Luca screamed to the pilot, slamming the cabin door shut from the outside.

“No!” Anna screamed from inside, banging on the reinforced glass. “Luca, no!”

The helicopter lifted off the ground, the force of the rotors blasting wind and snow across the roof.

Luca grabbed my collar and dragged me behind a massive steel ventilation unit.

Bullets pinged off the metal inches from our heads.

“Why didn’t you get in?!” I screamed over the gunfire.

Luca checked his magazine. He had four bullets left.

“If we both got in, the chopper would have been too slow to evade their fire,” Luca said, his face completely calm. “I had to keep them pinned down.”

I looked at him, terrified. “We’re trapped, Luca.”

He smiled, a dark, dangerous smile.

“We’re not trapped, Bella,” he said. “They are.”

Luca reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, black remote detonator.

“I bought this penthouse from a paranoid Russian oligarch,” Luca explained softly. “The roof is wired with C-4.”

My eyes widened.

“Cover your ears,” Luca ordered.

He pressed the red button.

The entire front half of the roof, directly where the Bellini hitmen were advancing, simply vanished in a blinding flash of white light and thunder.

The shockwave threw me hard against the steel vent, knocking the breath from my lungs.

Concrete rubble and smoke filled the air.

When the dust finally began to clear, the silence was deafening.

The Bellini men were gone.

Luca stood up, brushing concrete dust off his shoulders like it was dandruff.

He offered me his hand.

“Come on, sister,” Luca said. “We have a train station to get to.”

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