Chapter 7 - The Burning Docks
The Atlantic wind at Pier 12 was so cold it burned the lungs like acid.
The shipping terminal was an industrial labyrinth of stacked, rusty shipping containers towering forty feet into the freezing fog. Giant overhead cranes loomed against the black sky like the skeletons of prehistoric beasts—the exact same cranes that had severed my father’s life ten years ago.
We arrived in three black Suburbans, their headlights switched off, creeping along the rail spurs until the dark silhouette of Warehouse 4 materialized through the sleet.
Inside the warehouse, high-intensity halogen work lights illuminated a cavernous space smelling of diesel fuel, sea salt, and wet iron.
Twenty men were gathered around a makeshift staging area near the central freight elevator. Standing on a wooden shipping crate in the center of the floor was Marco Romano—thirty-four, leaner than Alessandro, with sharp, ferret-like features and a tailored leather coat that looked too big for his frame.
At his feet sat a small, green steel safe deposit box that had been pried open with a crowbar.
“He isn't coming!” Marco was shouting to his lieutenants, his voice echoing off the corrugated iron walls. “Alessandro is bleeding out in some back-alley clinic! By morning, the Commission will ratify our takeover of the logistics network! We control the water, we control the rail, and we control—”
The heavy corrugated metal door of Warehouse 4 didn't open.
It was torn completely off its steel tracks as the lead Suburban smashed through the entrance at fifty miles per hour, sending wooden pallets and steel drums flying through the air like bowling pins.
Gunfire erupted instantly—a chaotic, deafening roar of automatic weapons echoing inside the metal hangar.
Alessandro didn't wait for the dust to clear. He leaped from the passenger door of the second vehicle, his shotgun roaring in his hands.
Boom! Boom!
Two of Marco’s guards were thrown backward off the loading dock, their weapons clattering onto the concrete. Victor and four Romano loyalists fanned out behind the stacks of lumber, laying down a disciplined, suppressive hail of fire that forced Marco’s men to scatter behind the heavy forklift trucks.
“Clara, stay behind the engine block!” Victor yelled at me from the front seat.
I didn't stay behind the engine block.
Through the haze of gunsmoke and concrete dust, I saw Marco scrambling across the floor, clutching the thick manila envelope he had pulled from my father’s safe deposit box. He was heading for the narrow steel catwalk that led to the crane operator’s cabin forty feet above the harbor basin.
The same crane. The one that had dropped on Thomas Vance.
Something ancient and furious woke up inside me. Ten years of poverty, ten years of scrubbing grease from diner counters, ten years of listening to my mother cough her lungs into paper cups—it all collapsed into a single, blinding point of focus.
I jumped out of the SUV, ran across the oil-slicked concrete, and slipped through the narrow gap between two shipping containers before Victor could grab my arm.
“Clara, no!” Alessandro’s voice boomed above the gunfire, cracked with raw terror.
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I didn't stop. I reached the base of the crane’s maintenance ladder just as Marco’s heavy boots were clanging up the fifth rung.
I reached up, grabbed the hem of his leather overcoat, and pulled down with every ounce of strength in my body.
