Chapter 2 - The Red Silk Protocol
The silence in the car was broken only by the muffled roar of the rain pounding against the reinforced roof.
My toes curled instinctively against the rough wool of his trousers. I stared down at him—this man whose name made federal prosecutors look away in courtrooms, whose nod could close thirty miles of rail lines—kneeling at my feet in the cramped compartment of an armored Maybach.
"You don't break the bars by burning things down, Matteo," I whispered, my voice trembling now, the wall of detachment I had built over thirty-six months cracking down the center. "You break them by showing up. You break them by looking at me when I speak, instead of looking over my shoulder to see which enemy is stepping onto the perimeter."
Matteo did not release his hold on my ankles. His thumbs stroked the delicate bone of my arches, a gentle, rhythmic pressure that felt like an apology stripped of words.
"My father taught me that if you take your eyes off the door for five seconds, someone puts a bullet through your skull, Lucia," he said, his gravelly voice thick with an exhaustion he had never shown to a living soul. "When I married you, your father told me: 'Keep her alive, Matteo. She’s the only pure thing left in our family.' I thought keeping you alive was enough. I thought if no one could touch you, I had done my duty."
"I didn't need a guardian, Matteo," I said, a single tear finally escaping my lash, tracking hot down my cold cheek. "I needed a husband."
The radio transponder mounted on the front dashboard crackled with a sudden, violent burst of static.
"Boss!" Gianni’s urgent voice broke through the partition speaker. "The tail just cleared the bridge! Two black Dodge Rams, running dark, no headlights! They’re closing at sixty miles an hour!"
Matteo didn't panic. The softness in his expression didn't fade slowly; it locked back into place like an iron portcullis dropping into stone. He rose from his knees in a single fluid, terrifying motion, scooping me up by the waist with his left arm, lifting me off the bench and shifting my body flat against the floorboards beneath the heavy steel reinforcement bar of the front seat.
"Stay down," Matteo commanded, his voice dropping into that subterranean, lethal register. "Do not move until I tell you."
He reached beneath his discarded suit jacket, pulling out a customized SIG Sauer P226 with an extended magazine, racking the slide with a crisp, mechanical clack.
BOOM!
The first impact hit the rear quarter-panel of the Maybach with concussive force. The heavy armored vehicle shuddered, its four-ton frame skidding three feet sideways across the wet gravel before the specialized traction control bit into the mud.
Shouts erupted from the front cabin. Gianni was already throwing the transmission into low gear, the engine roaring like a caged beast as he slammed the accelerator down, spinning the wheels to break free of the embankment.
Through the rear bulletproof glass, headlights suddenly exploded into high-beam intensity.
The lead Dodge Ram had mounted the shoulder, its heavy steel brush guard lining up directly with our rear bumper. Sitting in the passenger seat, illuminated by the dashboard glare, was a man wearing a dark tactical vest, raising an automatic shotgun.
"Gianni!" Matteo barked into the partition mic. "Hard right into the rail access gate! Don't let them pin the axle!"
"Hold on!" Gianni roared back.
The Maybach lunged forward, smashing through a rusted chain-link fence, sending sparks cascading into the black night as we plowed into the abandoned freight yards of South Chicago.
Behind us, automatic gunfire began to chew through the sheet metal of our escort vehicle, the sharp, rhythmic pop-pop-pop of high-caliber rounds echoing off the brick walls of the empty grain silos like thunder.
Matteo knelt above me, his broad back shielding my body from the rear glass, his weapon leveled toward the darkness, his amber eyes blazing with an apocalyptic fury that sucked the air from my lungs.
"Lucia," he said without looking down, his voice completely steady amidst the gunfire.
May you like
"Yes?" I gasped, clutching his ankle with both hands.
"The divorce papers," he said softly, firing two controlled rounds through the reinforced gun-port in the rear window. "They’re in my pocket. If we get through this rail yard alive... I’m burning them with my own lighter."
