Chapter 6 - A King Reclaims His Throne
What happened next lasted less than six seconds, but to my senses, it unfolded with the agonizing clarity of a nightmare played in slow motion.
Marcus fired first. His round took the bodyguard on the left in the center of the chest. The man spun, his submachine gun rattling off a wild spray of lead that sparked violently off the cobblestones.
Vance didn't dive for cover. He moved with an inhuman, unnatural speed—a terrifying blur of motion that suggested he, too, had been subjected to his own twisted biological enhancements. He caught Leo by the collar of his shirt, hauling the boy like a shield toward the rear door of his sedan.
I didn't think about the pain tearing through my back. I sprinted.
My boots hit the wet asphalt, each stride stronger than the last. The phantom paralysis that had ruled my life for four years vanished beneath an ocean of incandescent fury. I was a Whitmore. My ancestors hadn't built this city with polite boardrooms; they had carved it out of stone and blood.
The second bodyguard raised his weapon toward me.
I didn't stop. I closed the distance in four strides, slamming my entire body into his chest with the force of a freight train. The impact drove the breath from his lungs. We hit the pavement hard, but as we rolled, I brought the butt of my heavy Colt down across his temple. Once. Twice. Bone cracked. He went limp.
I scrambled up, spinning toward the sedan.
Vance was already inside the backseat, the door slamming shut.
“Uncle Charles!” Leo’s scream shattered through the tinted glass as the child’s face pressed against the window.
The sedan’s tires shrieked against the wet cobblestones, smoking furiously as the rear axle kicked out. The vehicle surged forward down the narrow alleyway, heading toward the main artery of the industrial park.
I raised my gun, aligning the sights with the rear driver’s side tire.
*Bang! Bang! Bang!*
The heavy .45-caliber slugs tore into the reinforced rubber, but the run-flat tires held. The sedan fishtailed violently, clipped a rusted dumpster, and then blasted out onto the avenue, disappearing into the heavy morning fog that was rolling off the Atlantic.
“Boss!” Marcus was at my side, breathing heavily, a graze along his jaw weeping blood. “Moretti’s backup is two blocks out. We have to clear the zone!”
I turned back to Clara.
Two of my operatives were carrying her, her head lolling against an operator's shoulder, her breathing dangerously shallow.
“Get her to the townhouse,” I ordered, my voice dead, flat, and colder than the December river. “Call Dr. Mercer. If she dies before I get back, Marcus, I will personally burn this city to the ground.”
“Where are you going?” Marcus asked, his eyes wide.
I picked up the dropped submachine gun from Vance’s dead bodyguard, checking the chamber with a crisp, practiced snap.
“Salvatore Moretti wants to live forever,” I said. “I’m going to show him what eternity feels like.”
Twenty minutes later, the iron gates of the Moretti estate in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, did not open for visitors.
My Escalade smashed through them at fifty miles an hour.
The reinforced steel grille of my truck sheared the ornamental wrought-iron hinges clean off their stone pillars, sending the gates crashing across the manicured lawn. We roared up the circular driveway, spraying gravel across three parked Mercedes-Benz sedans.
Before the guards on the front portico could even draw their weapons, four of my men were out of the trailing vehicles, laying down a suppressing hail of fire that shattered the stained-glass front doors into a million iridescent shards.
I walked up the stone steps.
I wasn't using a cane. I wasn't limping.
I wore my blood-splattered tuxedo, the family crest pinned over my heart, the submachine gun held low at my hip.
The two guards in the marble foyer were already on the floor, groaning, disarmed by my point men. I walked past them as if they were trash on a sidewalk, straight toward the double mahogany doors that led to Salvatore Moretti’s private study.
I kicked the doors open.
Inside, the room smelled of expensive cigars, old leather, and the sour, chemical stench of intravenous cancer medication.
Sitting behind a massive desk of carved walnut was Salvatore Moretti.
He was seventy-two years old, his skin yellowed and papery, bald from chemotherapy, hooked up to two medical drips on rolling stands. Surrounding him were four of his surviving capos, all of them with their hands halfway inside their coats, their faces frozen in pure, unadulterated shock.
Not because Charles Whitmore had invaded their fortress.
Because Charles Whitmore was standing on his own two feet.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” one of the capos whispered, crossing himself.
“Salvatore,” I said, stepping into the center of the room. My voice was calm, conversational, which only made it more terrifying.
The old mob boss stared at me through cataract-clouded eyes. His jaw worked silently for a moment before he managed to croak out: “Charles. You’re... the rumors... they said you were healed.”
“A boy healed me, Salvatore,” I said, taking two slow steps closer. The capos tensed, but none of them had the courage to draw. They knew if a single shot was fired in that room, none of them would see the sunrise. “An eight-year-old child who carries my blood. The child you helped Julian Vance kidnap.”
Moretti swallowed hard, his trembling hand reaching up to touch the IV line in his arm. “I had no choice, Charles! Look at me! The doctors gave me three weeks! Three weeks to divide an empire that took fifty years to build! Vance promised me... he said the boy’s marrow could rewrite my DNA. He said I would walk out of this room whole!”
“He lied,” I said.
I raised the submachine gun and fired a three-round burst into the intravenous fluid bags beside Moretti’s chair.
The plastic ruptured, sending clear saline and chemotherapy drugs spraying across the walnut desk. Moretti flinched, curling into a ball, whimpering like a frightened dog.
“Vance doesn't save people, Salvatore,” I snarled, stepping up to the desk and leaning over it until my face was six inches from the old man’s nose. “He harvests them. And you sold an eight-year-old child to a butcher so you could cheat the devil for another six months.”
“Where is he?” Moretti weeped, tears rolling down his yellowed cheeks. “I don't know where Vance took him! I swear on my mother’s soul, Charles, Vance doesn't tell me his bases!”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not! He’s using an offshore facility! An old sea platform off Montauk! He brought a research vessel in under a Panamanian flag three days ago!”
I stared into Moretti’s eyes.
I had spent twenty years reading the faces of liars, killers, and thieves. The old man was telling the truth. He was too terrified of the grave to fabricate a story.
I lowered the weapon.
“You have three weeks, Salvatore,” I said quietly.
“Charles... please...”
“Take your three weeks. Divide your empire. Tell your sons to prepare your funeral.” I turned my back on him, walking toward the shattered entrance of the study. “Because if my nephew dies on that ship, I won't wait for the cancer to finish you. I will come back here, and I will dismantle everything that carries your name.”
I walked out of the estate, into the breaking dawn.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out. It was Marcus.
“Boss,” Marcus said, his voice breathless and frantic. “You need to get to the townhouse right now.”
“Is Clara worse?”
May you like
“No,” Marcus whispered, a tremor in his seasoned voice. “Clara is awake. But she says... she says Leo’s time is almost up. She can feel it, Charles. The boy’s heart is failing.”
***
