Chapter 5 - Blood On The Asphalt
Before Gianna could scream at Sergio for using her family’s tragedy as a weapon, the concrete vault shook violently.
A muffled, thunderous explosion echoed from the street above, followed immediately by the rapid rattle of automatic gunfire.
The halogen lights flickered and died, plunging the underground room into eerie crimson illumination from emergency backup generators.
Luca burst through the heavy vault door, an automatic rifle gripped in his bloodied hands.
“Carmine’s strike team just breached the perimeter gate!” Luca yelled over the sound of shattering glass above.
“They cut the surveillance feeds and brought heavy armor!”
Sergio didn’t panic; his movements became fluid, clinical, and terrifyingly calm.
He reached beneath the examination table, unholstering a matte-black pistol and racking the slide with a metallic snap.
He grabbed Gianna by the wrist, pulling her behind him as they moved through a narrow concrete escape tunnel behind the racks.
“If they take this vault, they burn the records and bury you in the harbor,” Sergio said, dragging her up a maintenance stairwell.
“Stay low and don’t look back!”
They burst out into an alleyway behind the warehouse, where cold rain slammed against their faces.
A reinforced black SUV was waiting with its engine idling, but before they could reach the door, headlights blinded them from the opposite end.
A modified pickup truck roared toward them, muzzle flashes illuminating the rain as bullets tore through the brick walls around their heads.
Sergio shoved Gianna hard behind an industrial steel dumpster just as a volley of rounds shredded the wet pavement.
He leaned out, firing three precise shots that shattered the approaching truck’s windshield, causing it to swerve and slam into an iron light pole.
But as Sergio pulled back behind the dumpster, Gianna heard a sickening, wet thud.
Sergio stumbled against the rusted steel, a sharp gasp escaping his lips as his pistol clattered onto the wet gravel.
Gianna looked down in horror as dark crimson blood bloomed rapidly across the front of his gray dress shirt.
A high-caliber bullet had torn through his left side, just below the ribcage, missing his heart by mere inches.
His skin turned ash-gray within seconds, his knees giving out as he slid down the wall into the mud.
“Sergio!” Gianna cried, her nursing instincts instantly overpowering the sheer terror freezing her limbs.
The sounds of shouting men and sirens echoed in the distance as Luca’s surviving guards engaged the remaining attackers at the front gate.
Gianna dropped to her knees in the dirty puddle, ripping open Sergio’s expensive shirt to expose the jagged wound.
Blood was spurting in rhythmic, terrifying pulses from a severed arterial branch near his abdomen.
“Leave... get to the subway...” Sergio wheezed, his cold fingers clawing weakly at her wet jacket sleeve.
“Shut up and stay still!” Gianna commanded, her voice ringing with raw authority.
She tore the long silk scarf from around her own neck and knotted it around his upper torso with violent efficiency.
Using an empty brass casing from the wet ground as a makeshift windlass, she twisted the silk tight until the arterial bleeding slowed to a dark trickle.
She pressed both of her hands firmly against the wound, using all her body weight to maintain manual pressure while kneeling in his blood.
Sergio looked up through glazed, pain-stricken eyes, staring at the fierce, determined girl refusing to let him die in the dirt.
Luca rounded the corner moments later, his face covered in soot, freezing in shock at the sight of the boss on the ground.
May you like
“Get this car open right now!” Gianna screamed at the stunned mob soldier.
“If we don’t get him to an operating table in fifteen minutes, he bleeds out before you can avenge him!”
