Chapter 11 - The Gun Behind Us
Dante stared at Marco.
Neither man moved.
Eighteen years of loyalty stood between them.
So did a loaded gun.
“Tell me it isn’t true.”
Dante’s voice was barely audible.
Marco’s eyes were wet.
“It’s true.”
My stomach dropped.
Rebecca stepped backward.
Marco pointed the gun toward the floor.
“I never wanted Gabriel dead.”
“You took Victor’s money.”
“Yes.”
“You helped him.”
“At first.”
Dante’s face twisted.
“At first?”
Marco swallowed.
“I was twenty-two.”
“So was Gabriel.”
“I know.”
Marco’s voice broke.
“Victor had my father’s debts.”
Dante moved closer.
“He killed my brother.”
“I didn’t know what the order was.”
“But afterward?”
Marco looked down.
“I stayed inside SAINT because I thought I could protect you.”
Dante laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“You lied to me every day for eighteen years.”
“Yes.”
“Did you give them the storage address?”
“No.”
“The shooters?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
Marco raised the gun.
And fired.
Rebecca screamed.
The bullet passed beside Dante and struck someone entering the crypt.
A man collapsed in the doorway.
He carried a suppressed pistol.
More footsteps thundered upstairs.
Marco shoved the flash drive toward me.
“Run.”
Dante grabbed my hand.
We moved through a maintenance corridor beneath the church while gunfire erupted behind us.
Marco stayed.
“Come with us!”
I shouted.
He shook his head.
“They need to believe the drive is still here.”
Dante stopped.
For the first time, Marco looked afraid.
Not of dying.
Of what Dante thought of him.
“I’m sorry.”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
“You should be.”
Then he pulled me away.
We escaped through a basement door into an alley.
Three minutes later, the church bells began ringing.
Then an explosion shattered windows above us.
I screamed.
Dante turned.
Flames climbed through the crypt entrance.
Marco never came out.
Dante stood beneath falling glass and smoke.
His oldest friend was gone.
His brother’s murderer was still alive.
And the evidence Victor Hale had killed for was now in my coat pocket.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A single message appeared.
YOUR MOTHER IS ALIVE.
Then another.
May you like
COME ALONE IF YOU WANT HER TO STAY THAT WAY.
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