Chapter 17 - The Man Behind the Curtain
"He's here!" Cassidy sobbed, trembling violently beneath Dante's crushing grip. "Victor is here in Boston! He flew in from Zurich this morning on a private jet!"
Dante frowned, his grip tightening. "Why would Victor come here himself?"
"Because he didn't trust me to secure the hard drive!" Cassidy wept, tears running down his aged, pampered face. "He said if the girl was dead, he needed the physical ledger to unlock the secondary vault in South America! He’s at the old dry docks in Charlestown right now, waiting for my confirmation!"
In Dante’s earpiece, Elena’s voice suddenly cut in, tight with urgency.
"Dante! Get out of there now! The security feeds just switched to a private mercenary loop—they knew we were tapping the network!"
Before Dante could react, the heavy oak doors of the VIP suite were kicked off their hinges.
Two men in black tactical gear burst into the room, their suppressed submachine guns already firing. Dante threw Cassidy into the line of fire; the senator took three rounds to the chest with a wet thud, collapsing onto the rug.
Dante rolled behind the heavy marble bar, drawing his weapon and returning fire. Glass bottles of vintage Scotch exploded above him in a shower of amber liquid and jagged shards.
"Elena, abort!" Dante yelled into the comms. "They're already in the building! Get Leo and head to the extraction point at the harbor!"
"I’m not leaving you, Dante!" her voice crackled back through static.
"Move, Elena! That's an order!"
Dante fired twice around the corner of the bar, taking down one of the gunmen with a clean shot to the chest. He lunged forward, grabbed the fallen man’s submachine gun, and sprayed a suppressing burst toward the open doorway before diving through the shattered French doors into the museum's private courtyard garden.
Rain poured down from the black sky, soaking his tuxedo as he vaulted the stone perimeter wall into the dark alleyway where an idling sedan was waiting.
He ripped open the driver-side door, but instead of the empty getaway car he had staged, he found himself staring down the barrel of a polished chrome revolver.
Behind the wheel sat a man with silver hair, an elegant three-piece suit, and eyes as cold and empty as a winter grave.
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"Hello, Dante," Victor Vance said with a chilling, patrician smile. "You always were too sentimental for this business."
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