Chapter 5 - The Price of Vengeance
The line went dead silent for three agonizing seconds. You could hear the roar of the helicopter blades and the crashing of the ocean waves below, but over the phone speaker, Dante Moretti’s breathing sounded like the low, dangerous growl of a caged tiger.
"Julian," Dante whispered, his voice dropping into a register so chilling, so utterly devoid of human warmth, that even Julian’s smug smile faltered for a fraction of a second. "If you have so much as scratched her skin, I am going to personally dismember you piece by piece and feed you to the harbor sharks."
"Ooh, scary," Julian mocked, though his hand trembled slightly as he held the phone. "But right now, Dante, you're three hundred miles away in Chicago, and your little genius girlfriend is sitting fifty feet above the Atlantic Ocean in my private chopper. If you ever want to see Cara alive again, you're going to wire every single cent of the Moretti syndicate’s primary liquidity trust into my Swiss account by midnight. And then... you're going to sign over full ownership of Moretti Global to my legal proxy."
"And if I refuse?" Dante's voice was dangerously calm.
"Then the next sound you hear will be your precious Chief Operations Director taking a very long, very fatal swim without a parachute," Julian snapped, pressing the barrel of a pistol against my temple.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird, but I refused to let him see me panic. I glared at Julian, spitting blood onto the metal floor. "You're a coward, Julian. You couldn't beat Dante fair, so you had to kidnap a civilian. You're already dead. You just don't know it yet."
Julian’s face twisted in rage. He raised the butt of his pistol, ready to strike me across the face—
CRACK!
The side door of the helicopter exploded inward in a shower of splintered aluminum and flying glass.
Before Julian or his two mercenary guards could even register what was happening, a massive, matte-black military tactical helicopter dropped out of the heavy cloud cover directly alongside us, its spotlight blindingly bright.
Standing on the open skid of the approaching chopper, tethered by a heavy steel harness, was Dante Moretti.
He wasn't wearing a coat. He wasn't wearing body armor. He wore a simple black shirt, the wind whipping his dark hair wildly around his face, and in his right hand, he held a customized assault rifle with terrifying, absolute authority.
"Dante!" Julian shrieked in sheer panic, abandoning me and lunging for the cockpit controls. "Get away—!"
Before Julian could pull the collective pitch lever, Dante fired a single, surgical shot through the cockpit window, shattering the glass and disabling the helicopter's main rotor control hydraulics with pinpoint precision.
The transport chopper violently shuddered, spinning out of control in mid-air as the pilot screamed in terror.
Viktor and two Moretti tactical operatives rappelled across the terrifying gap between the two aircrafts, crashing through the cargo door like avenging angels. Within three seconds, Julian’s mercenaries were disarmed, zip-tied, and pinned to the floor.
Viktor grabbed Julian by the collar, slamming him hard against the bulkhead.
Dante stepped across the threshold from the tactical chopper into our ruined cabin, his boots hitting the deck with a heavy, lethal thud. His chest heaved with adrenaline, his gray eyes burning with a terrifying, predatory intensity.
He didn't look at Julian. He didn't look at the guards. He locked his eyes entirely on me.
May you like
He dropped his rifle, rushed across the cabin, and dropped to his knees beside me. With trembling hands, he sliced through the zip-ties binding my wrists and ankles with a pocketknife, pulling me instantly into his arms and crushing me against his chest so hard it knocked the wind out of me.
"I've got you," Dante murmured fiercely, his voice cracking slightly against my hair. "I've got you, Cara. You're safe."
