Chapter 13 - The Sanctum Desecrated
Julian Vance’s right hand whipped out from beneath his tailored jacket.
In his grip was a ceramic-frame Glock pistol, completely invisible to the electromagnetic wands at the front doors.
"Julian! No!" Don Carmine roared, raising his cane in shock.
"This is consecrated ground!"
"To hell with your ground!" Julian shrieked, pulling the trigger.
The gunshot shattered the sacred silence of St. Jude’s like a cannon blast.
The nine-millimeter round tore through Don Carmine Falcone’s shoulder, spinning the seventy-five-year-old boss backward onto the stone floor.
Before the echo of the gunshot could fade, the doors to the elevated choir loft above the narthex burst open.
Four of Julian’s private mercenaries, armed with submachine guns smuggled into the bell tower hours before the summit, opened fire down into the nave.
Bullets chewed through the ancient oak pews, sending clouds of wood splinters and shredded hymnals into the air.
Votive candles exploded into rainfalls of hot wax and red glass.
Chaos erupted across the cathedral floor.
Unarmed mob capos and their bodyguards dove beneath pews, screaming in outrage and panic.
At the very first sign of Julian’s movement, Mason Moretti had already moved.
He did not reach for a weapon he did not have.
He threw his massive body entirely over Mia Carter, slamming her down onto the marble floor behind the altar’s heavy stone communion rail.
Bullets ricocheted off the limestone carvings inches above their heads, raining plaster dust down on Mia’s dark hair.
"Dante! Get Eleanor behind the sacristy door!" Mason roared over the deafening cacophony of gunfire.
Dante, ignoring the agonizing bullet wound in his shoulder, tackled Eleanor beneath the heavy oak credenza of the altar boy dressing room.
Julian Vance stood at the top of the altar stairs, firing blindly into the screaming crowd, his eyes wild with demonic delight.
"Kill them all!" Julian screamed toward the choir loft.
"Wipe out the old men! The city is mine!"
Mia pressed her cheek against the cold marble, her left arm tightly wrapped around her unborn child.
Beneath her chest, she felt the hard edges of the Iron Ledger.
Julian stopped shooting into the pews and turned his crazed gaze directly toward the altar.
He saw the corner of Mia’s black coat protruding from behind the communion rail.
He remembered the thumb drive.
He remembered the book.
Julian racked the slide of his pistol and began stalking down the marble steps toward Mia.
"Give me that book, you little gutter rat!" Julian snarled, his leather shoes crunching over broken glass.
"Give it to me, or I will put a bullet through that bastard inside your stomach!"
Mia looked up into the dark eyes of Mason Moretti.
Mason was completely unarmed, pinned beneath a hail of fire from the choir loft, but his eyes were blazing with pure, homicidal rage.
"Stay down, Mia," Mason whispered, his muscles tensing like coiled steel springs.
"Mason, don't! He has a gun!" Mia cried, grabbing his lapel.
Julian reached the bottom of the altar rail, pointing his weapon directly at Mia’s head.
"Time to die, widow," Julian sneered, his finger tightening on the trigger.
In that split second, Mia did not cower.
She reached into her coat pocket with her uninjured left hand and pulled out the heavy, solid silver medallion of Saint Jude that Lily had given her.
With all the desperate strength in her body, Mia whipped the heavy metal medallion directly into Julian Vance’s right eye.
The sharp silver edge struck Julian’s eyeball with a sickening wet crack.
Julian howled in blinding agony, stumbling backward, his gun discharging wildly into the ceiling fresco.
That half-second was all Mason Moretti needed.
Mason exploded off the floor like an enraged predator.
His left hand clamped onto Julian’s gun wrist, twisting it upward with such terrifying force that the bones snapped like dry twigs.
The ceramic pistol clattered harmlessly across the marble floor.
Julian shrieked, clutching his shattered wrist, blood pouring down his face from his ruined eye.
Mason’s right fist struck Julian’s jaw with the force of a sledgehammer, sending the traitor crashing against the high altar.
Up in the choir loft, the mercenaries suddenly ceased firing.
The heavy mahogany doors to the loft had been kicked off their hinges by Don Carmine’s armed perimeter guards, who had breached the rear entrances with automatic shotguns.
Shouts, rapid shotgun blasts, and the sound of bodies falling from the balcony ended the shooter threat in seconds.
Julian Vance, battered and bleeding, looked around the cathedral.
His mercenaries were dead.
The Commission guards were flooding the nave with drawn weapons.
With a desperate, animalistic screech of terror, Julian grabbed the Iron Ledger off the altar cloth with his uninjured left hand.
He scrambled toward the concealed stone doorway behind the crucifix that led to the winding spiral staircase of the cathedral bell tower.
"Mason!" Mia yelled, pointing at the open door.
"He took the ledger!"
Mason retrieved the ceramic pistol from the floor, checked the remaining ammunition, and offered his hand to Mia.
"Can you stand?" Mason asked, his voice trembling with fierce adrenaline.
Mia took his large hand and pulled herself up, her face covered in marble dust, her eyes burning with unstoppable courage.
"I am standing, Mason."
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"Then let us finish this," Mason said, racking the slide.
Together, they stepped through the shadow of the altar into the dark stone throat of the tower.
