Chapter 8 - The Trap at the Docks
The assault on Pier 42 was executed with military precision.
Vincent’s men moved like wraiths through the corridors of shipping containers. Suppressed rifle fire dropped the three dockside sentries before their bodies could hit the freezing seawater. By the time the catwalk guards realized the perimeter had fallen, Dominic’s snipers had already punched high-caliber rounds through the corrugated metal siding, sending two shooters crashing thirty feet down onto the concrete floor.
Then came the sledgehammer.
Vincent kicked through the heavy reinforced office doors of the primary processing floor, his carbine barking in steady, rhythmic double-taps.
Inside, the warehouse was a chaotic staging ground. Crates of unlicensed firearms and plastic-wrapped bundles of narcotics lay strewn across wooden skids. Seven Moretti soldiers scrambled for cover behind forklifts and steel drums, firing wildly with submachine guns.
Vincent didn't flinch. He advanced down the central aisle, firing from the shoulder, each squeeze of his trigger dropping an armed target with brutal efficiency. His men flanked from the east and west exits, cutting off every escape route until the warehouse descended into a heavy, ringing silence broken only by the hiss of punctured steam pipes and the groans of the dying.
At the far end of the facility, behind a reinforced glass supervisor’s booth, two figures remained.
Marco Moretti sat in a high-backed swivel chair, clutching an unlit cigar, his silver hair disheveled, an open briefcase of bearer bonds sitting on the desk beside him. Beside him cowered his nephew, Enzo—a pale, sweat-drenched twenty-five-year-old with a diamond earring and a trembling Beretta in his clammy palms.
Vincent kicked the office door open. The glass shattered outward in a glittering wave.
Enzo raised the Beretta, screaming in terror.
Vincent didn't even look at the weapon. He stepped inside, swept the barrel of Enzo’s gun aside with his left forearm, and drove the butt of his carbine straight into the young man’s nose.
Cartilage crunched violently. Enzo dropped to the linoleum floor, clutching his face, weeping hysterically through a mask of crimson.
Marco Moretti didn't move. He looked up at Vincent with dull, sunken eyes—the eyes of an old predator who knew the hunt was finally over.
“Vincent,” Marco croaked, his voice trembling with age and defeat. “Business is business. Take the shipments. Take the docks. Let the boy go. He’s family.”
Vincent lowered his carbine, allowing it to hang by its sling. He drew his SIG Sauer, stepping slowly toward the weeping Enzo on the floor.
“Did you give my son a choice, Marco?” Vincent asked, his voice deceptively soft, like silk over steel. “Did you give Elena a choice when you packed forty pounds of C-4 under my transmission?”
Marco’s face paled. “That was a tactical strike, Vincent. A message between syndicates. It was never meant for the boy.”
“And what about Leo Vance?” Vincent said, leaning down until his shadow completely engulfed Enzo.
Enzo’s weeping cut off sharply. He looked up through his blood-covered fingers, his eyes widening in pure horror.
“L-Leo?” Enzo stammered. “Who... who the hell is Leo?”
“The seven-year-old boy you ran down on Route 11 in Syracuse,” Vincent whispered into his ear. “The one whose mother just took a bullet to keep my Matteo alive.”
Enzo began to shake violently, realizing that his past sins had finally collided with his present doom. “No... please... that was an accident! My uncle handled that! It was an accident!”
Vincent reached down, caught the heavy gold Rolex on Enzo’s wrist, and stripped it off with a brutal, tearing twist that dislocated the young man’s thumb. He slipped the bloody watch into his pocket.
“She sent me to collect,” Vincent said.
He fired one shot into Enzo’s forehead, silencing the coward forever.
Marco gasped, clutching his chest, collapsing forward against the mahogany desk. Vincent turned the gun on the old don, his finger taking up the slack on the trigger.
“Wait,” Marco wheezed, his trembling fingers reaching toward an open safe beneath the desk. “Wait, Vincent... you think I’m the only snake in your garden?”
Vincent paused, the muzzle inches from Marco’s temple. “Speak.”
With his dying strength, Marco pulled a thick manila ledger from the safe and slid it across the blood-slicked desk.
“You think my men found your SUV by luck?” Marco coughed, blood bubbling from his mouth. “Look at the bank routing numbers, Vincent. Look at who opened the maintenance gates in Boston that morning. Look at who took three million dollars from my Swiss accounts forty-eight hours before the bomb went off.”
Vincent’s eyes flicked down to the open page.
His vision tunneled.
The handwriting on the offshore wire authorizations was unmistakable. The signature at the bottom was written in the familiar, cramped cursive of a man Vincent had known for twenty years. A man who had eaten at his dinner table, stood beside him at Elena’s funeral, and held the keys to every security system in the Rossi estate.
Dominic.
A gunshot echoed behind Vincent.
Marco Moretti slumped over the desk, dead, a bullet hole through the center of his forehead.
Vincent turned around slowly.
May you like
Standing in the shattered doorway of the office was Dominic, his suppressed pistol still smoking, his face carved from cold, impassive marble.
“You shouldn't have read that, Boss,” Dominic said quietly.
