All Chapters of The Debt of the Virgin Widow: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

"Open the damn door, Dante! Open it!"Bianca’s scream shredded the sterile air of the bunker. She slammed her shoulder against the six-inch titanium slab, the impact jarring through her bones and sending a white-hot spike of pain up her neck. The door didn't vibrate. It didn't groan. It sat there, a cold, indifferent wall of grey metal."Dante! You bastard! You can't leave me in here!"She hammered her fists against the surface. Thud. Thud. Thud. The rhythm was frantic, a jagged percussion of desperation. Her knuckles split against the industrial coating, leaving smears of dark, sticky red on the door. The copper scent of her own blood hit her nose, sharp and cloying in the recirculated air. She didn't stop. She swung again, her forearm cracking against the steel."Dante, f**k! I'm the one who should be out there! Not you!"Her voice broke into a wet, hacking cough. She tasted iron. Blood seeped from her vocal cords, hot and thick. She slumped against the metal, her forehead resting o

"Drop the gun! Hands behind your head!"The command bounced off the titanium walls, but the guard’s voice was a frantic mess. The heavy steel door groaned, pivoting on its massive hinges just enough to let a sliver of yellow hallway light slice through the bunker’s sterile white glow. Bianca didn't move from the floor. She kept her chin tucked, shoulders heaving in a fake, ragged rhythm. The water she’d dumped earlier pooled around her thighs, dark and deceptive."I can't... I can't breathe," she gasped.The guard stepped inside. His boots crunched on a stray cracker from the tray. He lowered the barrel of his rifle, his head tilting as he tried to scan her vitals in the dim light. "Stay back. I'm just checking the... oh shit, there's so much blood."He reached for his belt, probably for a med-kit, his attention flickering to the floor for a fraction of a second.That was the gap.Bianca exploded. She didn't stand; she launched herself from the floor like a coiled spring. Her fingers,

“You’re still breathing? You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Bianca shouted, her voice scraping against the roar of the fire.She kicked through the splintered remains of a mahogany side table. Heat slapped her in the face, a physical weight that made the air feel like molten lead. The hallway was a tunnel of orange and black. Velvet curtains—the ones her mother had spent six months picking out—dripped liquid fire onto the Persian rugs.“Dante! Answer me, you bastard!”She ducked as a section of the ceiling groaned and spat out a shower of sparks. No answer. Only the sound of the house eating itself. The smell was a nauseating cocktail of scorched paper, expensive wallpaper glue, and the metallic tang of blood.Bianca reached the library double doors. One was hanging by a single hinge; the other had been blasted inward. She shoved her way through. The library was a tomb. Thousands of first editions were curling into black flakes. In the center of the room, the massive steel door of the reinfo

"You see that? That white heat? That’s the end of the line," Dante grunted. He adjusted his stance, his boots skidding on the blood-slicked metal floor.The cherry red center of the vault door shifted. It bleached into a blinding, electric white. Molten steel began to weep from the circle, heavy droplets hitting the floor with a series of sharp, angry sizzles. The air in the safe-room was gone, replaced by a searing metallic fog."Thermal lance," Bianca spat. She gripped a shard of broken library glass, her knuckles white and shaking. "They're not just trying to get in. They're melting a hole big enough to walk through.""Yeah, well, they're in for a surprise," Dante rasped.He lunged toward the fireplace at the back of the small room, his movement jerky and pained. He grabbed the heavy iron poker, his fingers curling around the cold metal. He stood in front of her, his shoulders blocking the light. His left arm hung limp, a dead weight of shredded meat and soaked fabric. He looked li

“You’re fucking dying, Dante! Stay with me, look at me!” Bianca’s voice cracked, a jagged sound in the stifling silence of the Vane library. She pressed her palms against his chest, feeling the wet, rhythmic hitch of his lungs.Dante didn’t answer. He couldn’t. A bubble of pink, frothy foam grew at the corner of his mouth, popping with a wet hiss before another took its place. His eyes, usually sharp enough to cut glass, were filmed over, rolling toward the ornate ceiling.“Tick-tock, Bianca,” Arthur Vane said. He stood by the mahogany desk, smoothing the front of his silk waistcoat. He didn't look like a man watching his nephew bleed out; he looked like a man waiting for a slow waiter. “He’s got, what? Three minutes? Maybe four before the lungs completely fill. That’s a nasty way to go. Drowning on dry land.”“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!” Bianca screamed. She ripped a strip of her silk dress, the fabric screeching as it tore, and tried to pack the wound in Dante’s side. The blood