Chapter 7 - The Moretti Dungeon
Cold, damp concrete pressed against Hannah's face. The harsh smell of rust, mold, and diesel fuel filled her nostrils.
She groaned, opening her eyes. Her head throbbed with a blinding migraine. She was sitting on a dirty mattress inside a windowless cellar. Heavy steel bars sealed the room like an animal cage.
"Mama?"
A tiny voice whimpered from the dark corner of the cell.
Hannah scrambled to her feet despite her dizziness. "Lily! Grace! Emma!"
The three girls rushed into her arms, sobbing uncontrollably. They were bruised and terrified, but unharmed. Hannah held them tightly against her chest, rocking them back and forth while tears burned her eyes. Dominic was dead. The thought shredded her soul into a thousand bleeding pieces. The man who had protected her, the man who had loved her, the father of her children... was gone.
Footsteps echoed down the stone corridor.
An old man walking with a polished mahogany cane stepped up to the steel bars. He wore a tailored charcoal coat, a golden signet ring on his pinky finger, and possessed eyes as cold and dead as a shark's.
Don Vincenzo Moretti.
"So," the old man said, his voice raspy and thin. "The egg donor. You've given me a lot of trouble, Miss Mercer."
Hannah stood up, pushing her daughters behind her legs. She stared at the mob boss with pure hatred. "You monster. You killed Dominic."
Vincenzo chuckled softly, leaning on his cane. "Dominic Vale was a fool. He was soft. He cared about honor, about legitimacy. He forgot that in our world, power is all that matters. My daughter Julianna failed to give me an heir, but you... your biological code produced three healthy girls. Or should I say, three bargaining chips."
"What are you going to do with us?" Hannah demanded, her voice cold and steady.
"Dominic's lieutenants are scrambling like headless chickens in Westchester," Vincenzo explained calmly. "By tomorrow morning, I will use these children to force the Vale Syndicate to surrender all their shipping docks and concrete monopolies across the East Coast. Once the paperwork is signed... I will sell the children to a private buyer in Europe, and you... well, accidents happen in the river."
"You won't get away with this," Hannah spat.
"I already have," Vincenzo smiled cruelly. He turned and walked away, his cane clicking against the concrete floor. "Guard the door," he ordered a heavily armed guard standing nearby. "No one enters or leaves."
Hours passed in the suffocating darkness of the cellar. The girls eventually fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, curled up in Hannah's lap.
Hannah didn't sleep. She stared at the guard sitting near a wooden desk outside the cell, playing games on his smartphone. Beside his desk sat an old, dusty shortwave radio transceiver used by the warehouse staff.
Hannah's mind raced. Her father had been a ham radio enthusiast. She had spent endless childhood weekends learning how to operate frequency dials and emergency distress signals.
She looked at her sleeping daughters. I won't let him sell you, she swore in her heart. Dominic died trying to save us. I won't let his sacrifice be in vain.
Quietly, without waking the girls, Hannah reached through the steel bars. The guard was engrossed in his phone, his back turned to her. She picked up a small piece of loose concrete from the cell floor and tossed it into the far corner of the corridor.
CLATTER.
"What the hell?" the guard muttered, standing up and drawing his gun. He walked down the dark hallway to investigate the noise.
The moment he stepped out of view, Hannah reached as far as her arm could stretch through the bars. Her fingertips barely grazed the antenna of the shortwave radio sitting on the desk. Gritting her teeth against the agony in her stretched shoulder, she hooked her fingers around the strap and pulled the radio closer, sliding it through the bars into her cell.
May you like
She quickly dialed the emergency civilian band, pressing the push-to-talk button, and began broadcasting in a panicked whisper:
"Mayday! Mayday! This is an emergency broadcast! My name is Hannah Mercer! I am being held hostage by Don Moretti in an abandoned warehouse near the Queens waterfront! Please, if anyone can hear this... help us!"
