Chapter 3 - The Blood on the Marble
Dante’s eyes narrowed as he grabbed Julianna’s wrist. Her arm was thin as a twig, her skin cold as ice, but he pulled her out of the hydraulic chair with terrifying speed.
“Get under the desk!” Dante roared at Jean-Paul and his crying stylists. “And keep your mouths shut if you want to keep your tongues!”
The front doors of L’Étoile shattered into ten thousand glittering shards as heavy 9mm rounds shredded the glass frame.
Suppressors coughed in the rain outside—thwack, thwack, thwack—as bullets chewed through the plaster walls, shattering bottles of French perfume and bursting mirrors into clouds of silver dust. The air instantly filled with the sharp, chemical stench of expensive hairspray burning against electrical wires.
Dante dragged Julianna behind a heavy marble pillar supporting the central archway. He pulled her flush against his chest, shielding her fragile body with his leather coat. She clutched his lapels, her small fingers digging into the soaked wool, her forehead pressed against the blood-stained bandage over his ribs.
“Hold onto me,” Dante growled into her hair.
Three men in tactical black gear stepped through the broken door frame, their boots crunching on glass. They weren't street thugs. They moved with the silent, lethal coordination of private military contractors. On their shoulder patches was a silver crest: two interlocking letters—S.G.
Sterling Global.
“Search the back!” the lead operative ordered, his voice voice muffled through a black face mask. “Arthur wants the girl terminated! No open casket! Confirmed sighting by the Fifth Avenue watcher!”
Julianna let out a tiny, choked sound against Dante’s chest.
Dante didn't wait for them to clear the foyer. He leaned around the marble pillar and fired three rapid shots.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The lead operative dropped instantly, a bullet through his neck. The second man staggered backward as two rounds shattered his tactical vest, spraying dark red across the white velvet sofa in the lobby.
“Contact!” the third shooter yelled, lunging behind the reception desk.
Dante didn't give him time to re-engage. He stepped out from behind the pillar, grabbed a heavy iron styling cart loaded with brass mirrors, and shoved it forward with all his weight. The cart crashed into the shooter, knocking him flat onto the floor. Before the man could raise his weapon, Dante stepped on his throat, pointed his Sig Sauer straight down, and pulled the trigger.
BANG.
Silence returned to the salon, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the hiss of a broken hot water pipe spraying steam near the shampoo bowls.
Dante stood over the bodies, his chest heaving, fresh red blood soaking through the linen bandage around his waist. He spat a mouthful of metallic blood onto the ruined marble, then turned back to Julianna.
She was sitting against the base of the pillar, her hands pulled against her ears, her violet eyes wide, staring at the dead men in tactical gear.
“They... they were wearing the family crest,” she whispered, her voice dry as dead leaves. “Uncle Richard’s men.”
Dante walked over, grabbed his discarded black trench coat from a chair, and wrapped it completely around her small frame, burying her damp, short hair beneath the collar. He leaned down, scooped her up into his arms as if she weighed nothing at all, and held her tight against his bleeding chest.
“Who is Uncle Richard?” Dante asked, his voice low and dangerous as he walked toward the rear exit door leading into the alleyway.
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Julianna rested her head against his shoulder, her energy completely spent, her eyelids fluttering shut.
“The man... who paid the pilot... to turn off the engines over the Hudson,” she murmured before her mind surrendered to the blackness. “The man... who took my father’s throne.”
