Chapter 5 - The Last Stand on the Pier
The sun was just beginning to burn through the morning fog over the Delaware River when the black convoy rolled past the rusted iron gates of Pier 44.
There were no negotiations left. No clever phone calls. No warnings through intermediaries.
Salvatore Rossi had crossed the line when he breached Vincent’s home and put a gun near a child’s bedroom. In the underworld, war had rules, and Rossi had broken every single one of them.
Vincent stepped out of the lead SUV, his long black overcoat snapping in the cold river wind. Behind him, twelve of his most trusted enforcers fanned out across the rotting wooden docks, their weapons drawn and ready.
“Boss,” Viktor muttered, walking up beside him with a tactical shotgun resting against his hip. “Rossi’s inside the main dry dock office. He’s got four men with him. They’re barricaded.”
“Flush them out,” Vincent said coldly.
Two minutes later, the heavy metal door of the dry dock office blew inward with a deafening blast of C4 explosives.
Smoke billowed out across the concrete floor as Vincent walked through the smoke, his Sig Sauer raised.
Inside the small office, Salvatore Rossi—a heavily built man in his late fifties with slicked-back gray hair and an expensive silk tie stained with soot—was backed against a wall of smashed windows overlooking the river. His remaining guards had already dropped their weapons, realizing the fight was over before it started.
Rossi stared at Vincent with a mixture of terror and bitter resignation.
“You’re out of your mind, Moretti,” Rossi spat, blood trickling from a cut above his left eyebrow. “Starting a full-scale war over a dry cleaner and a brat? You’ve gone soft.”
Vincent stopped three feet away from him. The absolute, terrifying stillness of his posture made the air in the room feel heavy as lead.
“You didn't attack my business, Salvatore,” Vincent said, his voice a low, lethal whisper. “You attacked my family.”
“Family?” Rossi laughed hysterically. “She’s a stray you picked up off the—!”
Vincent didn't let him finish. He raised the butt of his pistol and brought it down across Rossi’s jaw with bone-crushing force.
Rossi collapsed instantly onto the floor, clutching his face, groaning in agony as blood pooled on the concrete.
Vincent stood over him, looking down with eyes as cold and dead as winter stone.
“It’s over, Salvatore,” Vincent said softly. “Your ports, your warehouses, your accounts—they belong to the Moretti trust as of five minutes ago. If I ever hear your name spoken in this city again, I won't put you in the hospital. I’ll put you in the river.”
He turned away, not even bothering to watch as Viktor and his men dragged Rossi out of the room by his collar.
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The war for Philadelphia was over. The throne was secure. But as Vincent walked back out into the sharp morning air, looking across the silver expanse of the river toward the city skyline, he knew the greatest battle he would ever fight had nothing to do with empires.
It had to do with the two people waiting for him behind the stone walls of the Main Line estate.
