Chapter 7 - Beneath the Gilded CageAt six in the evening, the Gilded Cage looked exactly as it had the night Sienna Blake’s life collided with Dante Moretti’s.
Music.
Gold light.
Crystal glasses.
Beautiful people pretending they were not afraid of the men sitting in the private booths.
Nobody knew that twenty feet below the dance floor, Sienna was crawling through an abandoned Prohibition-era tunnel with Dante behind her.
“Your nightclub has secret tunnels,” she whispered.
Dante’s voice came from the darkness.
“My grandfather moved whiskey through them.”
“Of course he did.”
“He was entrepreneurial.”
“He was a bootlegger.”
“Semantics.”
Sienna almost smiled.
Almost.
The countdown in her wrist display read:
12:31:42.
They had less than thirteen hours.
Nero guided them through an earpiece from Moretti Tower.
“Thirty feet ahead, tunnel splits. Take the right.”
Sienna moved quietly.
Dante moved nearly as well.
Nearly.
She glanced back.
“For someone who wears six-thousand-dollar shoes, you’re surprisingly stealthy.”
“You noticed my shoes.”
“I notice exits, guns, hands, shoes.”
“Romantic.”
“Focus.”
They reached the split.
The air changed.
Cooler.
Mechanical.
Sienna stopped.
“What?”
Dante whispered.
She lifted one hand.
“Hear that?”
A faint vibration.
Servers.
Fans.
Electricity.
They continued.
The brick tunnel ended at a modern steel door that had no business existing beneath a century-old nightclub.
Biometric scanner.
Keypad.
Camera.
Sienna studied it.
“Military installation.”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“Under my property.”
“Your father may have known.”
“He’s rapidly becoming less dead enough for me to kill him.”
Sienna glanced at him.
“That sentence makes no sense.”
“It does emotionally.”
Nero’s voice entered their ears.
“I can try the lock remotely.”
“No,” Sienna said.
“Why?”
“Too obvious.”
She looked at the camera.
“Someone wants us to find this.”
Dante understood.
“Kane.”
“Or Elena.”
Sienna stepped toward the scanner.
A light activated.
BIOMETRIC PROFILE DETECTED.
WELCOME, AGENT BLAKE.
The door opened.
Dante stared.
“That’s unsettling.”
“You have no idea.”
They entered.
The tunnel beyond had white concrete walls and recessed lighting.
No dust.
Recently maintained.
Sienna’s old instincts screamed.
This was not abandoned.
They passed an equipment room.
Weapons racks.
Medical supplies.
False passports.
Currency.
Dante picked up a passport.
The photograph showed Elena.
Name: Catherine Shaw.
Another.
Elena again.
Name: Maria Voss.
Another.
Elena.
Different hair.
Different nationality.
Sienna looked at Dante.
“She lived here.”
His face tightened.
“How long?”
“Years, maybe.”
They reached a larger chamber.
The walls were covered with surveillance photographs.
Dante stopped.
Every photograph was of him.
Dante leaving Moretti Tower.
Dante entering restaurants.
Dante at funerals.
Dante meeting politicians.
Dante at his father’s grave.
Dante sleeping inside a hospital room after Luca had been shot three years earlier.
Hundreds.
Maybe thousands.
His sister had watched him grow up.
Dante walked slowly along the wall.
“Why?”
Sienna looked at the dates.
“She was assigned to monitor you.”
“By Kane?”
“Probably.”
He found one photograph.
Dante, age nineteen, standing beside his father’s coffin.
Across the street, barely visible in the crowd, stood a woman wearing sunglasses.
Elena.
Dante touched the photograph.
“She was there.”
Sienna felt something tighten in her chest.
“She wanted to see you.”
“Then why didn’t she come to me?”
“Maybe she couldn’t.”
“Or didn’t want to.”
His voice was bitter.
A speaker crackled.
“Still impatient.”
Dante spun.
Elena’s voice.
Lights activated farther down the corridor.
Sienna drew her pistol.
“Show yourself.”
Elena laughed softly.
“You always were direct, Blake.”
“You know me.”
“I know your file.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.”
A pause.
“I know you.”
Sienna’s skin prickled.
“How?”
“Cairo.”
Sienna froze.
A mission seven years earlier.
A hotel bombing.
Her team had almost been trapped.
Anonymous intelligence had given them an escape route.
She had never known the source.
“That was you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Kane ordered me to.”
Dante shouted toward the ceiling.
“Stop talking through speakers.”
Elena ignored him.
“Sienna, there is a door at the end of the hall. Come alone.”
Dante immediately said, “No.”
Elena laughed.
“Still bossy.”
“Elena.”
The humor vanished from Dante’s voice.
“Come out.”
Silence.
Then:
“You were seven the last time I hugged you.”
Dante froze.
“Nine.”
Another silence.
“I stopped seeing you when I was seven,” Elena said.
Something about that distinction felt important.
Dante’s face changed.
“You were alive before the crash.”
“No.”
“You just said—”
“I said I stopped seeing you.”
Sienna suddenly understood.
“Kane took her before the crash.”
Elena did not respond.
Dante stared into darkness.
“Mother staged the crash because you were already gone.”
“Yes.”
His voice broke.
“Why?”
“Because she was trying to get me back.”
Dante lowered his gun.
“Our mother died trying to save you.”
A door opened at the far end.
Elena stepped out.
No camera.
No recording.
Real.
She wore black tactical clothing, a pistol on her hip, dark hair tied behind her head.
Dante stared at his sister.
Seventeen years collapsed between them.
Neither moved.
Sienna lowered her weapon slightly.
Elena looked at her brother.
“You look like Father.”
Dante’s eyes glistened, but no tears fell.
“You look like Mother.”
That broke something in Elena’s face.
Only for a second.
Then training returned.
Dante took one step.
Elena’s hand moved toward her weapon.
He stopped.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“You’re my sister.”
“That means nothing.”
“It means everything.”
“Blood is biology.”
“To you?”
“To me, survival is everything.”
Dante looked at the wall of photographs.
“Then why watch me?”
Elena said nothing.
“Why come to my father’s funeral?”
Silence.
“Why keep pictures of me?”
Her jaw tightened.
“Operational awareness.”
Dante laughed bitterly.
“You have a picture of me feeding pigeons when I was twelve.”
Elena’s eyes flickered.
“They could have been dangerous pigeons.”
Sienna almost laughed despite herself.
Dante did.
One short, disbelieving sound.
Elena looked startled by it.
For a moment, they were brother and sister.
Then a red light flashed.
Sienna reacted.
“Down!”
Gunfire erupted from behind Elena.
Elena dove.
Dante pulled Sienna behind a concrete pillar.
Three men in black entered from a rear access corridor.
Cleaners.
Elena fired first.
One dropped.
Sienna fired second.
Another spun backward.
The third disappeared behind cover.
“Elena!” Sienna shouted. “Who sent them?”
“Kane!”
Dante stared.
“I thought Kane was protecting you.”
“So did I!”
A grenade rolled into the room.
Sienna’s eyes widened.
“Move!”
Dante grabbed Elena.
All three sprinted into the hallway.
The explosion ripped through the surveillance chamber.
Heat chased them.
Elena stumbled.
Dante caught her.
She instantly shoved him away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I had balance.”
“You were falling.”
“I was repositioning.”
Dante looked at Sienna.
“She’s worse than you.”
Sienna fired over his shoulder.
“Family resemblance.”
They reached a locked blast door.
Elena entered a code.
Access denied.
Her expression changed.
“He revoked my credentials.”
Sienna looked at her.
“Kane.”
Elena nodded.
“Why?”
“Because I warned Marcus.”
Sienna understood.
“You told him not to bring me in.”
“I told him Orpheus was compromised.”
“By whom?”
Elena looked at Dante.
“Not Kane.”
Gunfire hit the walls.
Dante returned fire.
“Wonderful time for ambiguity.”
Sienna moved to the access panel.
“Who compromised it?”
Elena hesitated.
Then:
“The Directorate.”
Sienna froze.
She had heard the name only once.
A rumor among Unit 77 operators.
A committee above Kane.
People without names.
“Real?”
Elena nodded.
“They created Orpheus.”
“Kane works for them?”
“Worked.”
Dante fired twice.
“Difference?”
“They’re trying to erase him now.”
Sienna cracked the panel.
“And everyone connected to him.”
“Yes.”
“Including us.”
“Yes.”
“Including you.”
Elena looked almost amused.
“Especially me.”
The blast door opened.
They ran.
Behind them, the cleaners approached.
Ahead was an old tunnel descending toward the river.
Nero’s voice suddenly returned after minutes of static.
“Sienna? Dante?”
“Alive.”
“Good. Bad news.”
“Of course.”
“The countdown accelerated.”
Sienna checked.
03:58:19.
Her blood ran cold.
“We had twelve hours.”
“Not anymore.”
Dante looked at Elena.
“Can you stop it?”
She shook her head.
“Kane can.”
“Where is he?”
“The courthouse.”
Sienna stared at her.
“Actually there?”
“Yes.”
Dante reloaded.
“Then we go.”
Elena stepped in front of him.
“You don’t understand.”
“What?”
“The courthouse is not a meeting.”
Sienna already knew.
“It’s a kill box.”
Elena nodded.
“Kane expects the Directorate to attack.”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“He’s using Sienna as bait.”
“No.”
Elena looked at Sienna.
“He’s using all three of us.”
“Why?”
“Because there is one thing the Directorate wants more than Orpheus.”
“What?”
Elena’s eyes moved between Sienna and Dante.
“Every person who knows it exists.”
A burst of gunfire echoed from the tunnel behind them.
Dante looked at his sister.
“Can you fight?”
Elena stared at him.
Sienna groaned.
“Do not ask her that.”
Dante smiled faintly.
For the first time, Elena smiled back.
Then she drew two pistols.
“Try to keep up, little brother.”
They turned toward the approaching cleaners.
Three ghosts from three different versions of the same war.
The mafia king.
The betrayed agent.
The dead sister.
And somewhere above them, beneath the lights of Chicago, the countdown continued.
03:41:02.
May you like
03:41:01.
03:41:00.
