Chapter 6 - The Breach at Elm Street
The armored SUV tore through the rain-slicked side streets of the industrial district like an angry black bullet.
The speedometer needle hovered steadily past eighty miles an hour as the driver cut through red lights without slowing down.
Dora pressed her forehead against the cool, vibration-heavy ballistic glass of the rear passenger window.
Her fingernails dug into the palms of her hands until the pain cut through the numbness of pure terror.
Every second felt like an hour stretching over razor wire.
She knew every pothole, every cracked streetlight, and every rusted fire escape on Elm Street.
It was a forgotten corridor of crumbling tenements where sirens were common and police response times were non-existent.
If two armed hitmen entered building 412, nobody would call for help.
The neighbors would simply lock their deadbolts and turn up their television sets to drown out the noise of breaking wood.
Beside her, Leonardo was operating with cold, machine-like focus despite the fresh blood seeping through his dark knit sweater.
He did not wince.
He did not groan.
With his right hand, he chambered a heavy round into a short-barreled shotgun resting between his knees.
“Dante, report,” Leonardo commanded into his handheld tactical radio.
The radio crackled with static before Dante’s harsh voice broke through the channel.
“Lead car is thirty seconds out from Elm, boss.”
“We have visual on the street.”
“An unmarked gray commercial van is double-parked directly in front of 412.”
“The engine is still warm and the hazard lights are blinking.”
Dora let out a strangled gasp, her body lunging forward against the seatbelt.
“They’re inside,” she whispered, her voice cracking with pure horror.
“They’re already in the building!”
Leonardo’s hand clamped down over her wrist, his grip steady and unyielding.
“Breathe, Dora.”
“Don’t lose your head now.”
“We are on them.”
The SUV rounded the corner of Elm Street on two wheels, the tires screeching violently against the flooded asphalt.
Up ahead, the battered brick facade of building 412 loomed through the dense gray sheet of rain.
Dante’s black vehicle did not tap its brakes.
With a sickening roar of accelerating horsepower, Dante’s SUV rammed the back bumper of the gray van at forty-five miles an hour.
The metal impact sounded like a bomb detonating in the narrow alley.
The van was shoved forward ten yards, spinning sideways and smashing violently into an iron fire hydrant.
A geyser of high-pressure street water exploded into the air, showering the front steps of the tenement in a roaring white spray.
Leonardo kicked his door open before his SUV had even come to a complete stop.
“Perimeter team, lock down the street!” Leonardo barked into the radio as he stepped into the rain.
“Dante, take the fire escape!”
“Nobody leaves this block breathing!”
Dora scrambled out of the vehicle right behind him, ignoring the freezing rain hitting her face.
“Stay in the car!” Dante yelled at her, drawing a suppressed submachine gun.
“Go to hell!” Dora screamed back, sprinting toward the front stoop.
“My sister is up there!”
Leonardo did not waste breath arguing with her.
He caught up to her in two massive strides, his right arm shoving open the shattered exterior glass door of the building.
The hallway smelled of stale cabbage, moldy plaster, and damp wool.
From the third floor above, the unmistakable sound of an iron door being struck with a sledgehammer echoed down the stairwell.
Boom.
Boom.
The sound vibrated through the cracked plaster walls like thunder.
Dora’s heart felt as though it were being crushed in a vice.
Sofia was trapped behind that wooden door.
She was strapped to a fifty-pound mechanical cycler with plastic tubes running directly into her peritoneum.
She could not run.
She could not hide under the bed.
She was tethered to a machine that took fifteen minutes to safely disconnect without causing fatal internal contamination.
Leonardo moved up the concrete stairs with frightening, predatory speed, taking three steps at a time despite his torn bicep.
Dora sprinted right behind his heels, her lungs burning with raw, icy air.
When they reached the third-floor landing, the scene was already soaked in violence.
Two men wearing dark rain slickers and ski masks were standing before the door of apartment 3B.
One held a shortened twelve-gauge shotgun while the other was raising a heavy iron battering ram for a third strike.
The wooden doorframe was splintered, the deadbolt hanging by two stripped screws.
“Drop the iron!” Leonardo’s voice did not sound human; it sounded like iron grinding against rock.
The man with the shotgun spun around, raising his barrel toward the stairs.
Leonardo did not hesitate for a microsecond.
His customized Kimber roared twice in the narrow, reverberating hallway.
The muzzle flashes illuminated the peeling floral wallpaper in blinding bursts of white light.
Both .45 hollow-point rounds struck the shotgunner in the center of his chest plate.
The kinetic force slammed the man against the opposing wall, knocking the shotgun from his hands as he slid down the baseboard, leaving a wide smear of crimson.
The second man dropped the heavy iron ram, reaching frantically for a pistol holstered at his hip.
Dante appeared at the end of the hall, having scaled the fire escape in record time.
A single suppressed three-round burst from Dante’s weapon ended the struggle before the second man could clear leather.
The hallway fell into an echoing, hollow silence, choked with the sulfurous stink of burning gunpowder.
Dora didn't look at the two bodies sprawled across the torn linoleum.
She threw her entire weight against the splintered door of apartment 3B.
The shattered frame gave way with a loud crack.
“Sofia!” Dora shrieked, stumbling into the small, dark front room.
The apartment was plunged into shadows, save for the rhythmic blue glow of the automated dialysis cycler beside the fold-out sofa.
In the corner, huddled on the floor between the mattress and the radiator, was Sofia.
The nineteen-year-old girl was trembling violently, clutching a dull silver kitchen knife in her small, pale hands.
Her long dark hair was plastered to her sweat-soaked forehead, her breathing ragged and shallow.
The clear plastic tubing that connected her abdomen to the fluid bags was stretched taut, threatening to rip from the subcutaneous anchor with every terrified shiver.
“Sofia! Oh god, Sofia, it’s me!” Dora sobbed, dropping to her knees on the bare floorboards and wrapping her arms around her sister’s frail frame.
“It’s me, baby, you’re safe, you’re safe!”
Sofia dropped the butter knife.
The metal clinked harmlessly against the floor.
She buried her face into Dora’s soaked pink uniform, her entire body shaking with hysterical, silent tears.
“Dora… there were men shouting…” Sofia choked out, her voice barely a whisper against Dora’s collar.
“They were trying to break the lock…”
“They said they were going to drag me out into the street…”
“I couldn't unplug the machine… I didn't know what to do…”
“Shh, look at me, look at my eyes,” Dora pleaded, cupping her sister’s hollow cheeks in her bandaged, blistered hands.
“Nobody is touching you.”
“I am right here.”
A tall, imposing shadow fell across the bedroom threshold.
Sofia gasped in sudden terror, shrinking back against the sofa cushions.
Leonardo stood in the doorway, his broad frame filling the narrow entrance.
His overcoat was soaked in rain and soot, his Kimber still resting in his right hand with the slide locked back.
His pale hazel eyes swept over the cramped, impoverished room.
He took in the water-damaged ceiling tiles.
He saw the small electric space heater with its frayed cord.
He saw the shelves lined with cheap canned beans, generic antibiotics, and sterile dialysate boxes stacked like bricks against the crumbling drywall.
And finally, his gaze settled on the terrifying tangle of medical tubes running into Sofia’s frail abdomen.
For the first time, Leonardo’s expression softened into something that looked astonishingly like remorse.
“Dante,” Leonardo said quietly, without looking away from the two sisters.
“Call Dr. Gregory.”
“Tell him to prepare the west wing medical bay at the estate immediately.”
Dora whipped her head around, her amber eyes blazing through her tears.
“We are not going to your estate!” she spat, shielding Sofia with her torso.
“You brought this death to our door!”
“You brought monsters to my home!”
Leonardo stepped slowly into the room, his heavy boots making no sound on the floor.
He knelt down on one knee, bringing his eyes level with Dora’s.
“Your home is gone, Dora,” he said, his voice terrifyingly calm, steady, and devoid of malice.
“Look at that door.”
“Look at this street.”
“Do you think Angelo won't send four more men the moment these two fail to check in?”
“Do you think this rotting wood will protect your sister when they bring gasoline next time?”
Dora looked at the splintered doorframe hanging off its hinges.
She looked at the blood dripping from the landing into the entryway.
She looked down at Sofia, whose lips were beginning to turn a faint, dangerous shade of blue from the stress-induced drop in blood pressure.
Her home was indeed gone.
The fragile illusion of safety she had spent seven years building on seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour had been shattered by three rounds of gunfire.
“Her machine,” Dora whispered, her voice breaking under the weight of reality.
“She can't travel without it.”
“If she misses a cycle, the toxins build up in her blood within twelve hours.”
“She will go into septic shock.”
Leonardo looked down at the humming medical unit on the nightstand.
He reached out with his uninjured hand, gently touching the edge of the plastic casing.
“Dante will carry the entire machine to the vehicle without disconnecting a single wire,” Leonardo promised, his gaze locking with Dora’s.
“My estate has an independent hospital-grade power grid and a private surgical suite.”
“My personal physician was the head of vascular surgery at Columbia before I put him on my payroll.”
He leaned in closer, his voice dropping into a solemn vow.
“I told you that you would not bear the cost of my war alone.”
May you like
“Now pack her medicine.”
“We are leaving before the city wakes up.”
