Chapter 8 - The Clearing of Accounts
The noise inside the steel building was deafening—a continuous, roaring wall of gunfire that shattered every remaining window pane in the ceiling.
Carmine’s men were completely caught in the open. The Valenti machine guns tore through the thin metal sides of the Falcone vans, disabling their vehicles and forcing the survivors to scatter behind rusted machinery.
Adrian moved with ruthless, terrifying efficiency.
He didn't take cover behind pillars. He walked forward through the smoke and muzzle flashes, his custom pistol firing with rhythmic, absolute precision. Every shot he fired found its mark.
Marco moved beside him, providing covering fire as they cleared the central gangway.
“Carmine’s running for the rear exit!” Marco yelled over the roar of shotgun blasts.
Adrian saw him. Carmine was dragging a weeping, terrified Renata by her hair, using her as a human shield as he sprinted toward a broken service door at the back of the foundry.
Adrian didn't rush. He smoothly ejected his empty magazine, slapped a fresh one into his grip, and picked up his pace.
Rex leaped over a pile of rusted iron pipes like a black missile, cutting off Carmine’s escape route at the rear door. The massive dog pinned two Falcone guards to the concrete floor before they could raise their sidearms.
Carmine hit the rusted service door, found it chained shut from the outside, and spun around, gasping for air. He threw Renata onto the wet concrete at his feet.
“Adrian! Wait!” Carmine pleaded, raising his empty hands, his chrome pistol lying spent on the floor ten feet away. “We can make a deal! The commission... the commission will give you fifty percent of my territory! Just let me walk!”
Adrian stopped ten feet away. The ambient smoke of spent gunpowder drifted around his shoulders like black fog.
He looked down at Renata, who was crawling on her hands and knees in the dirt, her expensive dress torn, her gray hair hanging in matts across her face.
“Adrian...” Renata wept, reaching out a trembling, filthy hand toward his leather boots. “I raised you... I cooked your meals when your mother was sick... please... please, Adrian...”
Adrian looked down at her with pure, unadulterated coldness.
“You raised me on rules, Renata,” Adrian whispered. “Rule number one was loyalty. Rule number two was strength. You broke both.”
Adrian turned his gun toward Carmine Falcone.
“This is for Marcus Brooks,” Adrian said smoothly. “And for every night a little girl slept scared because of your greed.”
BANG.
Carmine Falcone collapsed onto the concrete floor, his reign over the New York underworld ending in an instant.
Adrian did not look at the body. He lowered his weapon and turned his eyes back down to Renata.
She was hyperventilating, pressing herself against the rusted metal door, waiting for the bullet.
Adrian pulled the small stuffed rabbit from his vest pocket. He gently brushed a smudge of black engine grease off its single plastic eye.
“I promised a four-year-old girl that I would return her toy without a scratch,” Adrian said softly, placing the rabbit securely back into his pocket. “Which means I am not going to stain it with your blood tonight.”
Renata gasped, a sudden, pathetic ray of hope washing over her withered face. “You... you’re sparing me?”
“No,” Adrian corrected, his voice dropping into something far worse than death. “Death is easy, Renata. Exile is long.”
He turned to Marco, who had just stepped up beside him with three armed guards.
May you like
“Strip her of the Valenti name,” Adrian ordered calmly. “Take her estate keys, her bank cards, her coats, and her papers. Put her on a bus to South Dakota with fifty dollars in her pocket. If she ever steps across the state line into New York again... let the dogs feed.”
Marco grabbed Renata by the arms, dragging her away as she began to wail—a long, miserable sound that was lost in the vast, empty rafters of the iron foundry.
