Chapter 8 - The Underworld Strike
The peace inside the office didn't last. At four in the morning, the mansion’s alarms began to blare with a deafening, rhythmic scream. The red emergency lights flashed along the limestone corridors, and the sound of distant automatic gunfire echoed from the southern edge of the estate near the lake.
The Morettis hadn't waited for Dominic to strike. They had used the storm to launch a direct assault on the mansion itself, determined to take the head off the Vale family in a single, bloody night.
Dominic was out of his chair in half a second, his Kimber 9mm instantly in his hand, the exhaustion vanishing, replaced by the lethal instincts of a multi-generational warlord. He pulled Emma behind his desk, pushing her down into the reinforced steel footwell beneath the heavy mahogany structure.
"Stay here, Emma!" Dominic shouted over the sound of the alarms, his eyes flashing with a terrifying, protective fire. "Do not move under any circumstances! Mason! Get the interior perimeter locked down!"
The office door exploded inward as Mason Reed and three security operators backed into the room, firing their weapons into the hallway. "Boss! They bypassed the gate sensors! They’ve got twenty men inside the lower levels! We need to move you to the safe room in the basement!"
"No," Dominic said, checking the ammunition clip of his weapon. "The safe room is a trap if they control the stairwells. We hold the gallery. We choke them at the landing."
He looked down at Emma beneath the desk. She was terrified, her fuller body shaking as the sound of explosions shook the glass windows of the room. Yet, as she looked up at him through the red light, she didn't scream. She reached out and touched his boot.
"Come back to me, Dominic," she whispered.
"Always," he said.
For the next two hours, the grand limestone mansion became a slaughterhouse. Dominic led his men with a ferocious, unyielding efficiency, turning the marble hallways into defensive checkpoints. He didn't hide behind his guards; he fought at the front, his weapon barking in the dark as he systematically neutralized every Moretti soldier who crossed his path.
By six in the morning, the gunfire died down into a silent, smoky standstill. The assault had failed. The Moretti strike team lay dead or captured along the grand staircase, and their family's control over Chicago was permanently broken.
Dominic walked back into his office, his coat torn, his face covered in soot and a small cut dripping blood down his temple. He dropped his empty weapon onto the floor and rushed to the desk, pulling away the chair.
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Emma was there. She scrambled out of the footwell, her gray uniform covered in dust, and threw her arms around his neck with a desperate, crushing strength. Dominic caught her, lifting her fuller figure against his chest, burying his face in her dark hair as he held her like she was the only real thing left in a world of ash.
"You're safe," he choked out, his voice shaking. "It's over, Emma. The war is over."
