Chapter 14 - The Interrogation in the Fog
They dragged the dying squad leader—a broad-shouldered man with Slavic tattoos stretching across his neck—into the sheltered alcove beneath the wooden pier of the boathouse.
The tide was rising, cold water lapping at the mercenary’s combat boots. Elena sat inside the cabin of the boat, watching over Leo while Dante worked. Through the foggy window, she could see Dante kneeling over the wounded man, the cold, merciless demeanor of the Don of the Moretti Family snapping back into place like armor.
Dante didn't scream or shout. He simply pressed his thumb firmly into the bullet wound in the man's thigh.
The mercenary convulsed, letting out a strangled scream before Dante clamped a hand over his mouth.
"Victor Vance didn't hire you from Moscow," Dante whispered, his voice dangerously level. "Victor doesn't have the contacts anymore. Who signed the escrow contract for this hit?"
The man spat blood onto the wet planks, laughing weakly through broken teeth. "Go to hell, Moretti. You're yesterday's king. The whole city knows you traded your crown for a ghost and a bastard."
Dante didn't blink. He drew a combat knife from the mercenary's own vest and drove it two inches into the wooden plank right between the man's splayed fingers.
"The next one takes your thumb," Dante said calmly. "And then I kick you into the incoming tide with twenty pounds of tackle weights around your neck. You have five seconds. Who holds the contract?"
The man looked into Dante’s eyes, saw the utter absence of mercy, and broke.
"Cassidy," the mercenary wheezed, trembling from hypothermia and shock. "Senator Cassidy’s office in Boston. He’s running the Vance trust now. Victor gave him the keys three days ago."
Elena, listening through the cracked window of the boat cabin, felt a chill deeper than the ocean air strike her spine.
Senator Thomas Cassidy was her father's oldest political puppet—the man her father had bankrolled from a local city council seat all the way to Capitol Hill. If Cassidy had allied with Victor Vance, it meant the entire machinery of the state government, law enforcement, and federal agencies were no longer neutral observers. They were hunting dogs.
Dante pulled the knife from the wood, stood up, and looked at the bleeding mercenary.
"Thank you," Dante said quietly, before striking the man across the temple with the heavy butt of his sidearm, knocking him unconscious into the shadows.
He turned toward the boat, his face pale from blood loss. "Elena. Pack the baby. We aren't going south."
"Where are we going?" she asked, opening the cabin door to let him in.
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"To Boston," Dante said, his eyes burning with cold vengeance. "To the serpent’s nest."
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