I Raised The Mafia Boss’s Secret Daughter For Five Years—Until He Caught Her At The Airport / Chapter 31 / 60

Chapter 31 - The Black Fall

The drop was a rush of freezing air, grease, and the sharp scent of industrial brine.

Vincent’s arm stayed locked around my ribs, anchoring me against his chest as gravity pulled us into the dark chute beneath the sub-floor. We hit an angled sheet of galvanized tin, sliding at breakneck speed down the maintenance runoff chute before violently spilling out onto a bed of wet gravel and standing water.

The impact rattled every bone in my body. Vincent took the brunt of it, rolling beneath me with a sharp, choked gasp of agony. His body shuddered as the fresh incision on his hip—where doctors had harvested his bone marrow for Maya barely thirty-six hours ago—slammed against the stone floor.

Above us, the muffled roar of Dante’s men firing blind into the floor grates echoed through the shaft. Bullets pinged against metal far above, useless and erratic.

"Vincent!" I scrambled onto my knees, splashing through icy sludge. My hands found his shoulders. He was drenched in sweat and stagnant water, his teeth clenched so hard I could hear them grind. "Vincent, talk to me."

"Still breathing," he rasped, his voice raw. He reached up, his leather-gloved fingers finding the side of my face, checking me with frantic precision. "Claire. Did they hit you? Are you bleeding?"

"No. I’m whole. But you—your incision—"

"Doesn't matter." He forced himself upright, leaning heavily against the damp brick wall of the storm cistern. His breath hitched, a sharp hiss of pure pain, but his eyes in the faint glow of an emergency valve lamp were fierce and lucid. "The grid discharge fried Dante's comms and blinded the bay, but he has reinforcements stationed at the surface perimeter. We have less than eight minutes before they figure out the runoff schematics."

I gripped his forearm, feeling the violent tremor in his muscles. "Where does this tunnel lead?"

"To the old municipal sluice gates on the north bank," he said, pushing off the wall. He stumbled, catching himself against my shoulder. The sheer weight of him reminded me that despite his lethal reputation, he was flesh and blood—and currently drained of the very marrow keeping our daughter alive. "Marco has an armored transport waiting by the spillway. We get to Maya. We disappear."

"Then move," I told him, wrapping his arm around my neck and bearing his weight. "Because nobody keeps me from my baby. Not Dante. Not this city. Not you."

A faint, ghost of a smirk touched his pale lips despite the agony etched into his jaw. "Good girl. Keep that fire."