Chapter 8 - The Shoreline Intercept
The cellar of the Maine estate was freezing, smelling of old stone, damp earth, and the dry oak of wine casks.
I sat on a metal folding chair inside the small, illuminated vault, my arms wrapped tightly around my knees, listening to the rhythmic, distant thud-thud-thud of the Atlantic surf against the cliffs below. Dr. Bianchi sat opposite me, his old leather medical bag open on his lap, his fingers tracking the second-hand of his watch as he monitored my breathing.
"The baby is quiet, signora," the old doctor said softly, his Italian accent thick and soothing. "She knows her father is outside. She is not afraid."
"I am," I whispered, the tears finally coming back now that I was separated from Dominic’s physical presence. "He’s out there in the dark with twenty-four men, Doctor. He think he’s invincible because he’s the Don, but he’s still just flesh and bone."
"Dominic Russo is not just a Don, child," Bianchi said, looking up with a look of ancient, unyielding respect in his eyes. "I saw his grandfather build the shipping lines from nothing but three wooden boats and a collection of iron pipes. I saw Dominic take the chair when his father died last year. The Morettis think this is about territory. They don't understand that to a Russo, a threat to the cradle is an insult to the earth itself. Dominic will not fight like a businessman tonight; he will fight like an ancestor."
Outside, the first explosion rocked the bluff.
A dull, heavy boom vibrated through the granite walls of the cellar, followed by the sharp, metallic rattle of automatic gunfire from the shoreline pathway. The Moretti transport vessels had breached the rocky cove below the house.
On the small security monitor mounted to the vault wall, the pale red infrared cameras showed three figures moving up the steep stone steps of the cliff. They were dressed in dark wetsuits, carrying short-barreled carbines, their faces obscured by night-vision goggles.
Then the camera view dissolved into a cloud of white static as a flashbang went off near the lens.
I buried my face in my hands, my body shaking with every distant report of the weapons. The gunfire was rhythmic—the sharp, erratic spray of the New York carbines answered by the heavy, deliberate boom... boom... boom of Dominic’s .45 and the tactical rifles of his Chicago detail.
"Come on, Dominic," I prayed into the dark of the vault, my fingers digging into the fabric of my grey sweater until the wool began to fray. "Come back to us. Please, just come back."
The monitor suddenly flickered back to life, displaying a live feed from the main courtyard directly above the cellar.
A single man was running across the snow-covered stone—Leo Moretti, his face pale, his expensive winter coat torn open at the chest, his weapon gone. He was running toward the main entrance of the house, his hands reaching for the brass handles as if he believed the interior would offer him protection from the shadow pursuing him.
He never reached the handles.
A massive figure stepped out from the white gloom of the snowstorm—Dominic, his long black coat covered in a layer of frost, his right hand holding the silver Kimber .45. He didn't run; he walked with a slow, geometric precision that looked entirely unnatural against the chaotic wind of the storm.
May you like
He raised the weapon. One shot.
Leo Moretti collapsed onto the stone steps, his body sliding backward into the white drift, his dark blood instantly spreading across the pristine snow like ink on paper.
