Gianna stood motionless before an ancient gilded mirror. Half of her aristocratic face was swallowed by heavy shadows; the other half was illuminated by the blood-red glow of the wall sconces.
Cassian stood exactly three steps away from her, his lethal gaze locked unblinkingly onto John Wick.
Gianna shook her head slightly, projecting an aura of tragic sincerity. "John, Santino is my younger brother. We are bound by blood."
"Bloodline?" John's voice echoed sharply through the cavernous stone hall.
"In the Camorra, and especially at the High Table, bloodlines are more fragile than the spiderwebs in these crypts when absolute power is on the line. Gianna, let us not insult each other's intelligence."
Gianna's pupils contracted by a microscopic fraction.
His brutal honesty had pierced her carefully constructed facade of calm.
"The Blood Oath hasn't been fulfilled..." she repeated John's earlier statement, her voice dropping to a whisper, as if she were desperately weighing a catastrophic decision.
Her piercing gaze fell back onto John's stoic face.
"John Wick... who exactly are you standing here as tonight? Are you a debtor refusing to pay his dues? Or are you a 'friend' genuinely trying to protect me?"
A cold, mocking smile played across her painted lips.
"As a man currently operating completely outside the rules," John replied, looking directly into her eyes, "I simply want to keep the past buried."
Gianna frowned deeply. The flickering candlelight cast shifting, jagged shadows across her beautiful features.
The seconds ticked by like a descending guillotine. The air inside the subterranean hall grew so dense it felt difficult to breathe.
She appeared to be caught in the throes of a violent internal struggle.
Her brother's blatant, venomous betrayal.
The High Table's absolute, undeniable mandate to execute the legend.
The terrifying, unpredictable lethality of the man standing unarmed before her.
Just as the oppressive silence reached its absolute breaking point, Gianna's eyelashes trembled.
She took a deliberate half-step backward, placing herself firmly behind Cassian. She turned her head slightly, her gaze sweeping past John's shoulder and landing squarely on the pitch-black alcoves near the chamber's entrance.
She offered a very subtle, almost imperceptible nod.
The reaction was instantaneous.
From the deep shadows cast by the agonizing reliefs of the suffering saints, over a dozen matte-black gun barrels violently thrust into the dim light.
The cold metal gleamed with an eerie, lethal intent, instantly locking onto John Wick as he stood completely exposed in the center of the kill box.
Cassian smoothly drew his suppressed FN Five-seveN pistol, aiming it directly at the space between John's eyes.
The stagnant air was suddenly thick with the metallic clatter of safeties being disengaged and hammers being cocked. The sheer killing intent radiating from the hidden gunmen was suffocating.
Gianna remained standing behind Cassian, her face completely expressionless, like a cold marble statue judging a sinner.
She looked at John, her red lips parting slightly. The words she spoke were colder than the catacomb walls.
"I am truly sorry, John. But your 'past'..."
Her gaze swept over the firing squad, finally settling back onto John's unnervingly calm pupils.
"...Including yourself, must be permanently buried here tonight. It is what the rules demand. And it is... my final choice."
The stone hall fell into a deathly silence, punctuated only by the faint, metallic scraping of triggers being prepped to fire.
The precise moment to execute the Baba Yaga had arrived.
"Flash!"
A harsh, commanding shout ripped through the gloom from the rear entrance of the bathhouse.
Before Gianna's pupils could even dilate, a compact black cylinder spun violently through the air, arcing toward the vaulted ceiling like a dice thrown by Death himself.
Cassian's elite reflexes flared instantly.
"Get down!"
He roared the command, violently tackling Gianna to the hard stone floor.
But it was a fraction of a second too late.
The Def-Tec 37mm stun grenade detonated exactly three feet off the ground, instantly turning the entire stone hall into a frozen, blinding hellscape.
BOOM!
The deafening, 170-decibel shockwave slammed into the room like a church bell being repeatedly struck against their eardrums.
An intense, 6,000-lumen burst of pure white light instantly swallowed the entire chamber.
The violent overpressure snuffed out every single candle in the room, leaving only the blinding strobe effect searing into their retinas.
In the blinding flash, the carved faces of the suffering saints seemed to twist and deform, as if the gates of hell had literally been blown off their hinges.
Bronze candlesticks, marble pillars, gilded mirrors—everything lost its physical outline in the absolute, blinding whiteness.
Cassian felt as though red-hot nails were being driven directly into his eyeballs. A sharp, agonizing buzz completely hijacked his hearing.
He desperately shielded his eyes with his left forearm, but the intense light pierced straight through his closed eyelids. The concussive dizziness struck the back of his skull like a sledgehammer.
Panic consumed the Camorra guards. Someone started firing completely blind, heavy caliber bullets exploding into harmless sparks against the thick stone walls.
Cassian instinctively threw his body over Gianna to shield her, pressing himself flat against the freezing floorboards while maintaining a white-knuckle grip on his FN Five-seveN.
But in the micro-second before Cassian was forced to squeeze his eyes shut, he saw John Wick move.
The Baba Yaga lunged into the cluster of disoriented bodyguards like a starving leopard.
The gunmen hidden in the alcoves groaned in agony, many dropping to their knees to violently clutch their ears. The heavy clatter of dropped rifles echoed through the ringing silence.
John had sprung into explosive action the exact millisecond he heard Anthony's tactical callout.
Using the blinding light as perfect cover, he crashed directly into the chest of the nearest guard, driving the man's weapon off-center.
With terrifying speed, John violently twisted the man's wrist, snapping the bone and cleanly stripping a Beretta 92FS from his grasp. Armed and lethal, John immediately darted toward the pre-planned escape corridor where Anthony was waiting.
Anthony had already snapped his tactical goggles down over his eyes and activated his noise-canceling headset. He gripped his compact HK MP7A1 tightly against his shoulder.
How could he possibly sit back and hold his fire during such an absolute harvest?
Every single kill in this room is going to yield attribute points!
The blinding flash of the stun grenade was comfortably filtered through Anthony's polarized lenses. He stepped out from behind the heavy stone pillar, squaring his stance and locking the PDW into his shoulder pocket.
Puff-puff-puff-puff!
The MP7A1 spat suppressed fire. The specialized 4.6×30mm armor-piercing rounds sprayed out at a blistering 950 rounds per minute, emitting a distinct, high-pitched synthetic hiss.
These specific micro-caliber rounds were designed exclusively to penetrate Kevlar. In the confined space of the catacombs, they were devastatingly lethal.
Three elite bodyguards, who had just managed to blink away the blindness and desperately aim their rifles at John's retreating back, were instantly cut down.
The armor-piercing rounds effortlessly punched through their soft ballistic vests, shredding their vital organs and splattering a gruesome mixture of blood and bone fragments against the ancient religious reliefs.
Anthony rapidly shifted his aim, firing two tightly controlled bursts. Two flankers attempting to rush the corridor were instantly kneecapped, screaming in agony as their femurs shattered and they collapsed onto the marble floor.
The MP7A1's absurd cyclic rate allowed Anthony to unleash a devastating wall of suppression fire, completely tearing through the Camorra's defensive line in less than a second.
His extreme trigger discipline and precise burst-fire effectively minimized ammunition waste.
The blinding effects of the flashbang finally began to dissipate. Thick, acrid gunsmoke filled the bathhouse, mixing with the desperate coughing and agonizing groans of the dying guards.
Anthony smoothly tossed a spare tactical earpiece to John. Simultaneously, he tracked his MP7A1 across the room, aiming squarely at Cassian—who was just struggling to his knees—before finally locking the red dot sight directly onto Gianna's chest.
John effortlessly snatched the earpiece out of the air, jammed it into his ear, and firmly gripped his stolen Beretta.
"You can't do this, Anthony," John stated coldly.
The stolen Beretta 92FS kicked violently in John's grip.
Bang!
The 9mm bullet struck Gianna D'Antonio dead center in the forehead with surgical, absolute precision.
A horrific blossom of crimson exploded from the back of her elegant, piled-up black hair. The warm blood splashed violently against her priceless emerald necklace, staining the diamonds red.
The look of profound, arrogant astonishment remained permanently frozen in her dead eyes. Her lifeless body simply folded, slumping heavily against the base of the Camorra's ancestral bronze scepter.
Cassian's eyes widened in absolute, soul-crushing horror. "Gianna—!"
Anthony grabbed the back of John's suit jacket, physically pulling the unnervingly stiff assassin deeper into the pitch-black passage.
"That is the real you, John!" Anthony yelled over the ringing gunfire.
Anthony knew the psychological truth of what had just happened. If Anthony hadn't aggressively aimed his weapon at Gianna, visibly projecting his intent to execute her himself, John likely would have hesitated to take the shot.
John had executed Gianna with his own hands specifically to prevent Anthony from incurring the ultimate wrath of the High Table. He had taken the sin onto himself.
"But you are still so damn stubborn!" Anthony cursed.
The two men sprinted headlong into the labyrinthine darkness of the Roman catacombs, leaving Cassian's beast-like roar of pure, unadulterated grief echoing violently behind them.
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