Kidnapping the Assassin: The Mafia Don’s Fatal Mistake

The Breach and the Blood

Chapter 29

[Elara]

Silence in the aftermath of an avalanche is a heavy, suffocating thing.

The roaring chaos of the collapsing mountain was instantly replaced by a stark, absolute quiet. The wind howled across the newly formed ridge, whipping the loose powder into blinding white vortexes. Beneath us, the Citadel was completely buried.

"Thermal imaging," I ordered, tapping the side of my goggles.

The lens shifted from optical to infrared. The fifty feet of snow covering the fortress was a cold, dark blue, but slowly, rapidly expanding pockets of bright red began to bleed through the surface.

"The exhaust vents are choked," I said, pointing toward the heat signatures. "Their internal temperature is spiking. The emergency generators are trying to cycle, but they can't expel the carbon monoxide."

"How long until they suffocate?" Cassian asked, standing right beside me. The freezing wind tore at his dark hair, but he looked completely unaffected by the cold.

"Ten minutes. Tops. The Commission won't die in the dark. They'll blow the emergency blast doors to clear the vents."

As if on cue, a muffled, deep vibration shook the snow beneath our boots.

THOOM.

A massive geyser of snow erupted seventy yards to our left, right near the edge of the cliff face. The Citadel’s internal defense system had detonated the emergency charges to blow the main hangar doors clear of the avalanche.

A gaping, dark tunnel appeared in the white mountainside, exhaling a massive cloud of hot, gray exhaust.

"They're open," Matteo yelled over the comms, raising his heavy machine gun.

"Move!" Cassian roared, his voice cutting through the freezing air like a blade.

We surged forward. Two hundred syndicate soldiers charged across the uneven snowpack, boots crunching heavily in the deep powder. We didn't try to hide our approach. Stealth was entirely useless now. This was a siege.

As we neared the dark, gaping mouth of the hangar tunnel, the red strobe lights of the Citadel’s emergency alarm system began to flash against the snow.

"Contact front!" Rocco bellowed.

Out of the smoke and exhaust, the High Table’s elite Arbiters poured into the tunnel entrance. They weren't street thugs. They wore heavy, white, winter-tactical armor that made them almost invisible against the snow. They moved with terrifying, synchronized military precision, instantly setting up a fortified firing line behind heavy steel barricades that had deployed from the hangar floor.

The first volley of automatic fire was deafening.

The air instantly filled with the sharp snap-hiss of supersonic rounds tearing through the space where we had just been. Three syndicate soldiers running to my right dropped instantly, their blood spraying a shocking, vibrant crimson across the pristine snow.

"Cover!" Cassian yelled, tackling me hard into a deep snowdrift just as a line of heavy caliber bullets chewed through the ice above our heads.

I rolled onto my back, the impact jarring my injured spine, and scrambled to unsling the heavy sniper rifle from my shoulder.

The syndicate returned fire. The sheer volume of lead we poured into the tunnel entrance was staggering. Tracers lit up the morning sky, crisscrossing in a lethal, chaotic web. But the Arbiters were entrenched. They had the high ground and the heavy cover.

"They're pinning us down!" Matteo shouted over the radio, pinned behind a rock outcropping. "If we stay out here in the open, they'll chop us to pieces!"

Cassian lay beside me, his dark eyes rapidly scanning the enemy firing line. He couldn't use his rifle with his mangled hand, so he held his Sig Sauer, waiting for a clear shot.

"The heavy gunner on the left," Cassian pointed with his chin. "He's laying down suppressive fire, keeping our left flank from advancing. Can you take him?"

I deployed the bipod of the sniper rifle, resting it on the hard-packed edge of the snowdrift. I pressed my eye to the scope.

Through the magnification, I saw the gunner. He was heavily armored, wearing a ballistic face shield, completely protected behind a steel barrier. Only the barrel of his weapon and a tiny sliver of his right shoulder were exposed.

"I don't have a shot on his vitals," I muttered, my finger hovering over the trigger. "The armor is too thick."

"Then don't shoot him," Cassian said calmly. "Shoot his weapon."

I adjusted my aim. I focused entirely on the heavy, heated barrel of the enemy machine gun.

I exhaled slowly, my heart rate dropping to a steady, rhythmic beat. The chaos around me faded away.

I squeezed the trigger.

The massive recoil slammed into my shoulder.

A mile away, the heavy caliber round struck the firing mechanism of the enemy machine gun directly on the receiver. The impact shattered the internal bolt carrier. The weapon violently jammed, a catastrophic malfunction that sent sharp pieces of shrapnel flying into the gunner’s armored chest, knocking him backward.

The suppressive fire on the left flank abruptly stopped.

"Left side is clear! Push!" Cassian roared, surging to his feet.

He didn't stay behind cover. He led the charge. The Don of the Rossi Syndicate sprinted directly into the line of fire, his dark coat flapping in the wind, firing his pistol with terrifying, absolute precision.

The syndicate soldiers rallied behind him, their morale surging as they watched their king run headfirst into hell.

We breached the tunnel entrance.

The fighting degraded from a long-range firefight into a brutal, close-quarters slaughter.

I dropped the sniper rifle, letting it hang by the sling, and drew my compact sidearm. I moved into the smoke, stepping over the bodies of the Arbiters.

A massive enforcer lunged at me through the gray exhaust, swinging a heavy trench mace directly at my skull.

I didn't try to block it. I dropped to my knees, sliding across the slick concrete floor of the hangar, entirely avoiding the massive swing. As I slid past his legs, I drew the ceramic blade from my thigh and severed his Achilles tendon.

He roared in pain, collapsing to one knee.

Before he could turn around, I brought the butt of my pistol down viciously on the base of his neck, ending his suffering.

I stood up, breathing heavily.

The hangar was ours. The surviving Arbiters were retreating deeper into the fortress, falling back behind a massive set of secondary blast doors.

Cassian walked over to me, his chest heaving, his face splattered with the blood of our enemies. He looked entirely unbroken.

"They're locking us out of the inner sanctum," Matteo yelled, pointing at the heavy steel doors slowly grinding shut at the end of the hangar. "We don't have enough C4 left to blow those hinges!"

I stared at the closing doors.

"We don't need C4," I said, a cold, calculating calm settling over me.

I walked over to the heavy command console located near the hangar entrance. The screen was locked, requiring biometric clearance.

I pulled the severed hand of the Arbiter commander I had killed in the snowdrift out of my tactical pouch.

Cassian stared at me, a dark smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. "You kept a souvenir?"

"I told you I know how they operate," I replied smoothly, pressing the dead hand against the biometric scanner.

The console beeped. The screen flashed green.

Access Granted.

The heavy blast doors groaned, halting their closure, and slowly began to open again, revealing the long, sterile corridors of the Citadel’s inner sanctum.

"Welcome to the High Table," I murmured, dropping the hand.

I looked at my husband.

"Let's go kill the Commission."