The man hits the concrete floor of the bunker hard, dropping into a tactical crouch directly in my line of fire. He is massive, wearing dark tactical gear heavily coated in white concrete dust and ash.
I center the iron sights of the Glock directly between his eyes.
"Don't move," I command, my voice a dark, absolute whip crack that echoes loudly in the concrete room.
The man freezes. He slowly raises his hands, completely empty, surrendering entirely to the barrel of my gun.
The dust slowly settles. The harsh beam of light from above illuminates his face.
My breath entirely catches in my throat. The heavy, cold iron of the gun wavers for a fraction of a second.
It is Dante Vitiello.
The underboss. The traitor. The man who guided Bastian and the FBI directly to the island.
Dante looks up at me. His face is a canvas of brutal violence. He has a massive, jagged laceration across his forehead, hastily stitched with medical staples. His left eye is completely swollen shut, a terrifying shade of deep purple and black. He looks like a man who has been tortured and dragged backward through a war zone.
He stares at the gun aimed at his face, then his eyes flick to my completely stoic, unyielding expression. He doesn't see the terrified captive he handed over to the Feds. He sees the Donna.
"You betrayed him," I state, my voice dropping into a lethal, venomous hum. I step forward, completely entirely closing the distance until the suppressor of the Glock is mere inches from his forehead. "You brought my brother here. Give me one single reason why I shouldn't completely blow your brains out right now."
Dante doesn't flinch. He doesn't beg for his life. He simply lowers his hands, reaching slowly and deliberately into the tactical vest strapped across his chest.
I tense, my finger entirely ready to pull the trigger.
But he doesn't pull out a weapon.
He pulls out a heavy, blood-stained silver signet ring.
The crest of the Thorne Syndicate gleams dully under the amber lights.
My heart completely stops. The absolute, paralyzing gravity of the object in his hand completely shatters my cold facade.
"Because," Dante rasps, his voice completely wrecked, thick with ash and pain, "he ordered me to come get you."
The world violently tilts on its axis.
"He's alive," I whisper, the gun slowly, involuntarily lowering a fraction of an inch, my entire body beginning to tremble violently.
"Barely," Dante grinds out, staggering to his feet, completely ignoring the gun still pointed at his chest. "He survived the blast. He pulled the federal tactical team into the eastern wing anddropped the roof on them. But the Feds pulled his body out of the rubble yesterday."
"They have him?" I choke out, the panic completely clawing its way back up my throat.
"They are holding him in a black site medical facility in Miami," Dante confirms, his jaw locking tight. "He is critical. He hasn't spoken a word. The Commission thinks he's dead. The FBI is preparing to transfer him to Florence ADX the moment his heart is stable enough for the flight."
"And you?" I demand, my eyes narrowing, the paranoia violently returning. "You set the trap. Why are you digging me out? Are you handing me over to the Feds too?"
Dante lets out a dark, bitter laugh that ends in a bloody cough.
"It was a double blind, Donna," Dante confesses, the absolute exhaustion completely bowing his broad shoulders. "Thayer knew Arthur left the secondary file. He knew the Feds were coming. He ordered me to leave a digital breadcrumb for Hayes Vance and the federal task force. He wanted to draw the rest of his enemies to this island so he could completely annihilate the federal threat in one single blast."
The sheer, psychotic magnitude of Thayer’s endgame completely paralyzes me. He didn't just purge the mafia. He entirely weaponized the federal government against the Commission, using his own home as the bomb.
"He told me to wait until the dust settled," Dante murmurs, stepping forward and pressing the bloody silver signet ring directly into my trembling, empty left hand. "He told me to dig you out, to hand you the ring, and to follow your orders. I am loyal to the Don, Sybil. And the Don belongs to you."
I look down at the heavy silver ring resting in my palm. The blood coating the metal is his.
He kept his promise. Even captured, bleeding out in a federal black site, he reached through the dark to find me.
