One Ring at the Crime Scene Made the Mafia Boss Question Everything He Knew About His Secretary

"How many?" Dante was on his feet instantly, his weapon cleared and ready.

Clara moved to the security console hidden behind a row of spice jars. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, bringing up the thermal feeds from the basalt tunnel.

"Six vehicles. Armored Suburbans," she said, her voice dropping instantly back into the cool, calculated cadence of a combat specialist. "They didn't track the Audi. They used the transponder in the encrypted drive."

"The drive was shielded," Dante snapped.

"Not against a military-grade satellite ping," Clara replied, tapping a sequence. "Nikolai didn't break out of your basement. They traded for him."

Dante’s eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, traded?"

"Look at the lead vehicle." She pointed to the grainy monitor.

Exiting the front passenger seat was not a mercenary in tactical gear. It was Salvatore Moretti—the elder Don of the Five Families’ northern territory, Dante’s godfather, and the man who had sat at Dante’s right hand during his father’s funeral.

Behind Moretti walked Nikolai Voss, his wrists free, rubbing the red chafe marks left by Dante’s handcuffs.

"Salvatore," Dante growled, the betrayal hitting him like a physical blow to the solar plexus. "He sold the port access."

"Moretti doesn't have the international connections to move container ships without the federal authorities noticing," Clara explained rapidly. "The Directorate promised him your northern shipping routes in exchange for your master ledger and my head."

"Why your head?"

"Because I know the identities of the six European board members. My father’s personal cipher is burned into my memory. If I die, the secret dies with me. If Moretti takes over, the Romano empire becomes their personal distribution hub."

The concrete walls vibrated as the first heavy breaching ram hit the steel blast doors at the tunnel entrance.

"The blast doors will hold for four minutes," Dante said, pulling an assault rifle from the concealed weapons locker beneath the floorboards. "The escape route leads down through the old drainage pipe to the river dock. I have a Zodiac boat with a twin-turbo outboard engine."

"They know about the river," Clara said, checking the tactical feed. "Look at the water."

Dante glanced at the river camera. Two black tactical patrol boats were idling two hundred yards off the shoreline, their searchlights sweeping the rocky banks.

"We're boxed in," Dante said.

"No," Clara said, a dark, lethal smile touching the corners of her lips. "They think we're boxed in. They think they're cornering an Italian mobster and his terrified secretary."

She pulled two heavy cylindrical charges from her go-bag—Russian-manufactured thermite blocks.

"What is that?" Dante asked.

"Ten thousand degrees of liquid magnesium," she said. "The ventilation shaft for this bunker runs directly above the basalt tunnel where their Suburbans are parked. If we drop these through the intake, the heat will ignite the fuel tanks of all six vehicles simultaneously."

Dante looked at the charges, then looked at Clara. A slow, predatory grin spread across his face.

"Remind me never to deny your request for a year-end bonus," he said.

"You never did, Mr. Romano. You always gave me thirty percent."

"Move."

They sprinted down the rear corridor toward the ventilation access. Above them, the screech of hydraulic cutters began to chew through the steel blast doors. Clara mounted an aluminum ladder, popped the ventilation hatch, and wedged the thermite blocks into the air current.

She looked down at Dante. "Do you have a flare?"

Dante pulled a magnesium emergency flare from his chest rig, struck the primer, and tossed it up to her.

Clara caught it, shoved it against the thermite fuse, and kicked the intake damper open.

"Down!" she screamed.

Dante caught her around the waist as she dropped from the ladder, carrying her down onto the concrete floor just as a deafening, catastrophic chain-reaction explosion ripped through the tunnel above.

The ceiling rained pulverized rock and mortar. The roar of detonating fuel tanks echoed through the rock, accompanied by the screams of men caught in an enclosed inferno. The steel blast doors blew inward off their hinges, propelled by the massive air displacement, but instead of armed mercenaries pouring through, a wall of pure orange flame and black diesel smoke rolled across the ceiling.

"Now!" Dante hauled her up.