76 "**“THROW THAT FILTHY BOOK IN THE TRASH! NOBODY WANTS HER PEASANT RECIPES AT MY WEDDING!”

"They broke in," Marco hissed, his eyes instantly turning wild. He grabbed the crowbar off the floor. "Stay behind me."

"No, Marco, there are at least four of them," Lily said, grabbing his arm. "They didn't come to talk. You heard them—they brought accelerant!"

The sharp, chemical stench of gasoline began drifting down the wooden staircase, accompanied by the muffled crackle of an open lighter.

"The papers!" Eleanor whispered urgently, frantically stuffing the British military documents back into the oilcloth. "If they burn this building, the evidence dies with it!"

"They're not burning this building," Marco snarled.

He turned toward the open cavity in the stone wall where the dispatch box had been hidden. "Lily, Eleanor, climb inside the tunnel! It runs fifty yards south toward the old subway vent on Cranberry! There’s an emergency grate that opens into the alley behind the bakery!"

"I'm not leaving you!" Lily said, gripping Marco’s sweater. "We fight together, Marco!"

"Lily, listen to me!" Marco grabbed her face in his rough, flour-dusted hands, his eyes blazing with an intensity that took her breath away. "The book and those papers are Antonio’s soul. You are my soul. If they take the papers, Jonathan wins forever. Get them to the Italian Consul. I will hold the stairs."

Before Lily could argue, Marco shoved her toward the narrow brick opening, forced Eleanor inside behind her, and slammed the steel dispatch box into Lily’s arms.

"Go! NOW!" Marco ordered.

He didn't wait for her reply. Marco grabbed two heavy glass carboys of seventy-year-old high-proof grappa from the cellar shelf, smashed their necks against the stone wall, and ran up the wooden stairs toward the kitchen, screaming like an enraged gladiator.

"MARCO!" Lily screamed, but Eleanor grabbed her shoulder, pulling her deep into the pitch-black, narrow brick tunnel.

"He’s protecting the hearth, Lily!" Eleanor yelled through the darkness. "We have to save the proof!"

Behind them, at the top of the cellar stairs, a massive explosion of fire and shattered glass lit up the gloom. Marco’s roar of defiance shook the tunnel walls, followed by the shouts of panicked men and the violent clatter of hand-to-hand combat.

Lily crawled through the damp, cobweb-choked tunnel, her knees scraping against broken brick and coal dust, clutching the heavy steel box against her chest.

Every instinct in her body screamed at her to turn back, to throw herself between Marco and the flames. But Antonio’s voice seemed to echo in the ancient bricks around her: *Hold the line, bambina. Protect the truth.*

Thirty seconds later, Eleanor pushed open the heavy cast-iron sidewalk grate at the end of the tunnel.

Lily pulled herself up into the freezing night air of the alley behind Cranberry Street.

Thick, black smoke was already billowing from the rear roof of Antonio’s Hearth. Red flames flickered behind the stained-glass windows of the prep kitchen.

On the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, two black SUVs were idling with their doors open. Standing by the corner was Vance, directing two men carrying five-gallon plastic gas cans toward the front entrance.

"Vance!" Lily’s voice cut through the roar of the fire like a silver blade.

Vance spun around, startled.

Lily stepped out of the alley into the streetlights, covered in soot, coal dust, and cobwebs, holding the British Army dispatch case high above her head with both hands.

"Looking for this?" Lily taunted, her voice ringing clear across the empty street.

Vance’s eyes widened in greedy recognition. "Drop the box, girl!" he barked, reaching into his coat for a weapon. "Get her!"

The two henchmen dropped their gas cans and charged directly at Lily.

Lily didn't run. She didn't flinch.

Instead, she whistled—a shrill, ear-splitting two-finger whistle she had learned as a kid on the playgrounds of Brooklyn.

From the shadows of the surrounding brownstones, the darkness suddenly moved.

Dozens of heavy wooden baseball bats, iron tire irons, and high-pressure fire hoses emerged into the streetlights. Twenty burly longshoremen from the Red Hook piers, led by Captain Miller and six off-duty firefighters, stepped out of the alleys, forming a tight, terrifying circle around Vance and his men.

"You boys lost?" Captain Miller asked calmly, resting a six-foot halligan bar against his shoulder.

Vance’s henchmen stopped dead in their tracks, their faces draining of blood as they looked around at thirty furious, broad-shouldered Brooklyn natives.

From inside the burning restaurant, the front double doors suddenly burst open.

Marco stumbled out into the cool night air, coughing violently, dragging an unconscious hitman behind him by the collar of his tactical vest. Marco’s face was smeared with soot, his shirt torn to shreds, but in his right hand, completely untouched by the flames, he held Nonna Maria’s cast-iron skillet, dripping with grease and blood.

Marco tossed the hitman onto the pavement at Vance’s feet, wiped his bloody lip with the back of his hand, and grinned through the smoke.