Chapter 26
Dante
“Tell me. Why is Jane so attached to this film that she’s willing to have people killed over it?” I asked, looking out into the vast server room. Data banks stood like pillars every few feet, they were lined up in a grid and went off into the distance in every direction.
We were in the heart of an IT station in a sublevel far below Jonathan’s office. It was a frigid, underground, technological warehouse that smelled strongly of heated plastic, metal and ozone.
With so many cloud hacks lately, Lionhouse opted to build a data farm on their property that wasn’t networked. This way they never had to worry about their sensitive information ever getting into the wrong hands. They were completely unhackable. If you wanted anything from here, you had to physically come down and get it. That included unfinished film projects, intellectual property and blackmailing evidence.
“She doesn’t care about the film. It’s the franchise she’s worried about.” Jonathan booted the terminal up and entered the appropriate passwords. “If the movie doesn’t get made or it isn’t delayed the right way, the rights revert to the original owners and Lionhouse losses that massive investment.”
“What does she care?” I idly tapped the monitor that Jonathan stared into while typing. “It’s not her money.”
“Her entire career is tied to it. Five years ago, she was the one who convinced the shareholders to spend billions on this property. The shareholders are a hair away from voting to fire her already, if we lose this property she’s out on her ass.” Jonathan paused to stare off and shake his head. This was obviously something he’s had to deal with for quite awhile. “I don’t know if it’s narcissism or vanity, but she doesn’t believe she can ever lose anything. I’d never met anyone as prideful and delusional as her.”
“And you’re just the CEO,” I said with mocking sarcasm. “You couldn’t possibly do anything about that.”
“That’s not how this company is structured! I’m more of a company representative than anything! I don’t have any real power.” Jonathan protested, glanced over at me with trepidation.
“Does that bullshit corporate copout help you sleep better at night? Go cry into your golden parachute.” I couldn’t hide my disdain even if I wanted to. Spineless worms like Jonathan disgusted me. He was the kind of guy that could let anyone be taken advantage of as long as he couldn’t directly be blamed for it. I had more respect for Jane than I did for him. At least she actively decided to be an evil bitch.
We stood in silence while he finished gathering the rest of the files.
“This is everything we have. Just hit delete and everything we have on you, Mitch and your crew disappears.” Jonathan’s voice and demeanor was as impatient as it was eager to be done with all this. It was clear that he was extremely uncomfortable getting his hands dirty by playing with us unsavory types. “Do you want to do the honors?”
I scrolled through the folders on the work station. Lionhouse sure did their homework. It was like scrolling through a highlight reel of every illegal thing I’d done with Mitch and his crew. Most of the worst shit I did when I was still a minor, but I wasn’t exactly an angel these past ten years either.
“What are you doing?”
“Atoning,” I said to myself, pulling out a USB flash drive and plugging it into the terminal. I cancelled out of the delete option and copied all the information instead. When the file finished coping, I grabbed the USB stick and took out the gun Hector had given me when I got inside the gate.
“Wait a minute!” Jonathan stumbled back a few steps. “We had a deal!”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Jonathan, I’m a criminal.” I was blown away at how naïve he still was. I forced him to call the receptionist and clear a tour group to visit his office. That would give Mitch and the rest of the crew access to the elevators to come up and meet us.
“We’re almost done.” I shoved him out of the IT room and back toward where we came from. “But, I have a feeling you’re not going to like this next part.”
* * * * *
“You took your sweet time.” Mitch sat in one of the plush chairs with his feet up on Jonathan’s desk. He had a few of the crystal decanters from the bar in front of him. “I’ve almost burned through all the good stuff.”
Next to him was Mal. She had her laptop out and was furiously typing.
“Where’s the rest of the crew?” I caught sight of the secretary bound on the floor, sobbing quietly. She looked shaken up, but otherwise unharmed. I shoved Jonathan over to Mal.
“Funny story, that. See, I was hoping to surprise you.” Mitch stood up and grabbed something large behind the desk. He dragged someone by their hair along the hard marble floor, dumping her unceremoniously in front of the desk. “Merry Christmas, Jack!”
Autumn? My heart lurched. What the hell was she doing here and what happened to her? She looked like hell in her torn up evening gown and bruises. My face flushed with hot, seething anger. If he did this to her…
“I don’t know what kinky shit she’s into, but for the record.” Mitch put his hands up, defensively. “I found her that way.”
“I’m all set by the way,” Mal said, plugging a chord from her laptop to Jonathan’s computer. “Just need him to sign in and I can start transferring money.”
“Well you heard the lady.” Mitch snapped
“You’re stealing from me? Absolutely not!” Jonathan protested. He still didn’t understand how any of this worked. “I’ve been nothing, but cooperative through this whole endeavor. But this is where I draw the line—”
“Hmm.” Mitch nodded thoughtfully, then fired a bullet into the secretary on the floor. “What was that about a line?”
“Goddammit, Mitch!” I rushed over to the screaming woman and untied her. Blood was already starting to pool under her. He’d shot her in the gut so it wasn’t immediately life threatening, but it’d be tough to stem the bleeding.
“I don’t even know her name, Jonathan.” Mitch casually strolled over to the CEO and pushed the warm gun barrel into his side. “You think I’m going to hesitate with you?”
“Her name’s Megan.” Jonathan stammered, horrified. With shaking hands, he typed in the passwords that gave Mal access to the company accounts.
“Autumn get over here and give me a hand.” I tore my shirt off balled it up and pressed it into Megan’s wound. Autumn scurried away from Mitch and landed at my side. I showed Autumn what she needed to do. If we couldn’t slow the bleeding slow down soon she wasn’t going to make it.
It was having her so close that I realized the bruises and blood on her was just makeup. The clenching I felt in my limbs subsided. Good. She wasn’t hurt…yet.
“I’m in.” A smile crept across the determined focus on Mal’s face. “It’s gotta verify, but it won’t be long now.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic! Best fucking news I heard all day.” Mitch took another drink from the decanter then threw it across the room. He took off his blazer and walked over to me, Autumn and Megan, gun in hand. “I hate to break your toy, Jack. But it’s time to tie up the rest of those loose ends.”
I stood up to face him.
“Nothing tests a man’s mettle like money or women; in this case it’s both.” Mitch glanced down at the gun in my waistband. “So, Jack, what’s it going to be? Millions of dollars on a white sand beach surrounded by more woman than you can shake a bottle of rum at for the rest of your natural life, or a curly-haired brunette and a pine box to call all your own?”
I exhaled, slowly tugging my gun out. It felt heavier in my hand than it ever had before. I looked into at Autumn’s beautiful brown eyes. My conscious was so raw and bloody that it stained everything I held too close.
It was time to end this.
I snapped the gun up at Mitch, but he anticipated that and pointed his at Autumn. The expression that darkened his features was one of expected, but still wounded betrayal.
“Part of me knew it was always going to end this way when you left that night three years ago, Dante.” Mitch frowned. “I guess I was just a damned, hopeful fool that you’d to come to your senses, see some reason.”
“Not a lot of room for reason in our line of work.” I tried to keep the worry off my face.
Mitch’s eye twitched, and his frown deepened. He turned his head toward Autumn and pulled the hammer of his revolver back. “No. I guess not, son.”
I tried to pull the trigger, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be a killer, not anymore. Mitch was a monster. He’d done and forced me to do awful things, but nearly fifteen years together was a long time.
In a twisted way he was the only father I had left.
I dropped my gun and dove at him instead, dragging him to the ground. Mitch rang my bell hard with a sharp elbow to the side of my head as we both hit the marble floor. He let his gun clatter away, but he didn’t need it. His ex-Special Forces training made him far deadlier than anyone I’d ever scrapped with. Sliding backward he drilled me in the face and chest with a barrage of punishing blows.
Mitch quickly got the upper hand and soon blood poured from my face from his devastating kicks and surgical punches. I blocked what I could, but Mitch was dismantling me with vicious efficiency. All it took was half a second of overcommitting to a punch for him to slip past my guard and break my arm. Autumn screamed my name as the room flashed white with searing pain.
It was soberingly clear to see that I was no match for him. I was stronger and faster than he was, but Mitch had decades of training, experience and skill on me. Mitch shook his head in disbelief, stunned that I was still on my feet.
Honestly, it made two of us. This wasn’t looking good and I was beginning to regret not shooting him when I had the chance. I had no idea how this was going to end, but the night Mitch showed up, I promised myself that I would do whatever it took to keep Autumn safe.
I ground my teeth, forced Autumn’s face to the forefront of my mind and took a step forward, my useless arm hanging limply at my side. If there was one thing the stunt industry taught me, it was how to take a beating and keep going.
I faked to the side, then ducked in as close to him as possible, absorbing a kick in my dead arm in the process. The intense pain made me black out for a fraction of a second, but I was already where I needed to be. I snapped my forehead down on his nose, shattering it with enough force that it dropped him to a knee.
I wiped the blood from my eyes and raised my fist to end it while I still could.
No one heard the door open or saw the slim figure walk in, but we all heard the gun shot. A look of surprise struck Mitch like a punch to the jaw before melting into amusement as his chest bloomed red.
“You were supposed to kill Dante, not fucking team up with him!” Jane’s heels clicked furiously off the marble as she advanced into the room. The small twenty-two caliber pistol swayed in her hand as she forced me to back away.
“I was never going to be able to fucking kill him.” Mitch chortled out a raspy laugh. “He might not’ve been my real son, but I was always his father—” Mitch’s head snapped backwards as the pistol fired again.
“No!” I screamed. I wanted him to be stopped and brought to justice, not killed! Mal screamed too, then ducked under the desk with Jonathan when Jane turned the gun on them.
“You were a rabid dog. Nothing more,” Jane spat, then turned to yell at Autumn. “Get over there by the desk.”
“She’ll die if I don’t keep pressure on her. She’s losing too much blood!” Autumn protested. She was right. Megan’s skin took on an alarming gray quality. If she didn’t get help soon, not even Autumn could keep her alive much longer.
Jane aimed the gun at Autumn, but Autumn refused to budge. My brave girl.
“It’s a shame about what happened to Autumn Moore, officers.” Jane practiced the timidity and fright she’d use when the cops eventually arrived as she draped a handkerchief over the gun I dropped. She picked it up in a way that her fingerprints wouldn’t get on the trigger. Everything she did with it now would look like I was to blame. “They killed her before I arrived.”
Mitch’s gun had slid clear across the room; I had no choice but to run at her.
The bullet took me in the chest, just beneath my collarbone, laying me out onto my back. There was nothing quite like being shot. Your adrenaline is pumping so hard that it’s hard to register what even happened. I stared into the chandelier above, remembering how I always felt the heat of the bullet before anything else, but that was probably just because my body was going into shock.
“I don’t know what happened, officers. I got up here as fast as I could.” Jane continued, sliding her small pistol against her lower back and into the hem of her skirt. Finally standing over me, she had to hold the heavy gun with two hands. Jane wasn’t nearly as good a shot as me or Mitch, but at this range she didn’t have to be. “They must’ve all killed each other.”
I turned to look at Autumn. Seeing her sweet face one last time was more than I deserved.
“Get away from him!” Autumn shoved Jane in the chest. Another round went off by my head spraying marble chips across my face. The bullet ricocheted harmlessly into the wall on the far side of the room. There was more yelling, but my ears were ringing so loudly that I couldn’t hear anything. I reached out to help, but I was too exhausted and beat to hell. She was on her.
Autumn moved her lithe body to the side with the speed and dexterity of an athlete. She slapped Jane’s unsteady hands wide, startling Jane enough to step in and strip the gun away from her just like I taught her. If I wasn’t dying, I’d be beaming with pride!
Backpedaling, Jane reached for the pistol tucked into the back of her skirt, but Autumn was on her in an instant. Autumn aggressively closed in on her like we were playing The Game, and punched Jane three times before knocking the older woman to the ground. Splayed out on the floor and unconscious, Jane looked incredibly frail.
Autumn striped the guns from her and ran back over to me. She yelled something at the two cowering behind the desk, but I couldn’t make it out because of the ringing in my ears that was only now starting to fade.
Mal made a run for it, darting out of the room with the frantic speed only seventeen-year olds had. Squeamishly, Jonathan surveyed the carnage and hesitantly approached Megan. Autumn grabbed him by the front of his shirt, moving him along faster and explained what he needed to do.
“Please stay with me, Dante,” Autumn said, kneeling by my side and grabbing my hand. Her voice was very distant, but slowly returning. She clamped a hand over mine to help slow the blood spurting out of my chest and squeezed my other hand tight. Her face was a mask of worry, not knowing how exactly to help me. “Jonathan called the police. An ambulance will be here soon. Stay with me. I’ll never forgive you if you—please don’t—” She choked on the words
“Hey,” I said with as much of a smile as I could muster. Exhaustion smothered me like a warm blanket. It was becoming harder and harder to keep my eyes open. “It’s OK.”
Autumn dropped her head and started sobbing before stopping herself, and looking up at me. Determination flared in her chestnut brown eyes. The tears made the red flecks in her irises sparkle. “No! Those do not get to be your last fucking words.”
“Tell me a story,” She demanded, pressing hard into my chest, tears openly flowing down her cheeks. “Anything. Just keep talking!”
“Fuck!” The renewed pain jolted me awake. I desperately fought to stay awake. I didn’t want to leave her again. Never again. “OK.”
Autumn glanced out of the open door to the swat team storming the waiting room. They came in like a line of angry wasps. The first man had a large black shield, the rest behind him were fit with armor and assault riffles. There was so much screaming.
“God. That was fast. Jonathan just called them.” Autumn said to herself as she laid across me, trying to shield me from whatever happened next. After they checked us, they swept the rest of the room, called it to be clear and told the EMTs to come up.
“Nathan Emmanuel Washburn,” I whispered into her ear, feeling half-delirious. I’d committed his obituary to memory and sent money to his widow’s account anonymously for years. “Sixty-seven years old. Husband to Anita Dolores Washburn. Father of two sons, William and Charles.”
“The security guard?” Autumn asked. Her conflicting emotions made her shoulders slump and her brow furrow. “You don’t have to talk about this.”
“When I couldn’t kill him...” I continued. It was suddenly important that Autumn know the worst thing I’d ever done. I wanted her to know who I really was. “Mitch wrapped his hand over mine and pushed down on my trigger-finger.”
“What?” Autumn reeled, eyes widening. “I thought… He forced you to?”
I trusted her with something I’d never trusted anyone else with; the truth.
“I could’ve stopped him, but I was too scared.” I swallowed. My mouth tasted like burnt copper. I should’ve stopped him. We’d gone on to do all sorts of illegal things after that—robbery, fraud, grand theft auto, but I’d never had to kill anyone ever again.
EMTs rushed into the room and immediately began working on Megan and Dante. They were followed by men in business casual slacks and long-sleeved shirts who wore bulletproof vests that had the letters FBI on them.
Finally.
“Dante, you were seventeen. That wasn’t your fault.” She brought her hand up to my face to console me when she noticed something poking out of the top of my jeans. She pealed the fabric back and pulled at a microphone that was taped to my balls. “What the hell? Is this a listening device?”
“After what happened to you I needed to set things right.” I was lifted onto a stretcher and prepped to be moved. “It was the only way for you to protect you.”
“Dante…” Autumn didn’t know what to say.
“I was going down the second Mitch found us that night, the only thing I could do after that was control the fall. Maybe they’ll reduce my sentence for cooperation?” If I survive.
“You’ve already lost so much,” Autumn said through upturned eyes.
“Jesus, Dante. When you called I wasn’t expecting this.” Nick, a federal agent, came up to me. He was in his late forties, had a military-short, blond haircut and wore his sunglasses flipped up on his head. Although I never met him in person I recognized his voice from my call earlier.
I first reached out to him over ten years ago as a terrified boy who’d just killed a security guard. In the end I was too scared to leave Mitch and the gang, but I always remembered his number.
“What the fuck took you so long, Nick?” I asked through a series of coughs.
“The gates were remotely shut down.” From the way the agent shook his head it was easy to tell he’d already decided that it wasn’t a malfunction. “Took us some time to crash through it.”
Jane. No doubt she saw the writing on the wall and tried to stall as long as possible so that she could maneuver herself into the best outcome.
“He’s lost a lot of blood. We need to move him.” The EMT looked to the agent for approval. He nodded
“The family in Wilmington?” I asked, grabbing the man’s arm and stopping us. I had put two rounds in the wall just to make Chip believe I killed them in case Mitch asked him about it.
“They’re fine. We got them. Thanks for the call.” Nick nodded in appreciation, before turning to address the EMTs.
Autumn followed me all the way to the ambulance, doing her best to comfort me. My eyes were closed more than they weren’t. There was so much I wanted to say to her before I blacked out for what might be the last time. “I was so lucky to have met you. Thank you—”