Chapter 4 - The Strike at Brooklyn
The Rain had returned by nightfall, turning the East River into a black, churning mirror reflecting the distant red lights of the Manhattan Bridge.
The Moretti family’s private warehouse at Pier 42 was an expansive, echoing structure of corrugated steel and rusted iron, smelling of saltwater, diesel fuel, and old copper. Outside, thirty heavily armed soldiers formed an impenetrable ring around the perimeter. Inside, six overhead industrial floodlights illuminated a single wooden chair placed in the center of the concrete floor.
Salvatore Rossi sat tied to that chair, his expensive Italian suit torn at the shoulders, his face slick with cold sweat.
Standing around him in a wide circle were the seven captains of the Moretti syndicate—hardened, powerful men who controlled the union halls, the gambling dens, and the shipping lanes of New York. None of them spoke. None of them looked Sal in the eye.
The heavy steel door of the warehouse rolled open with a loud, echoing screech.
I walked in, flanked by Vincent and six operatives carrying tactical shotguns. I was wearing a black leather trench coat, my hair damp from the rain outside.
Sal began to sob the moment he saw me.
“Gabriel! Gabriel, please!” Sal shrieked, his voice bouncing off the high steel rafters. “It was a mistake! Valenti trapped me! They threatened my daughters, Gabriel! I swear to God on my mother’s grave, I didn't know they were going to hurt Daniel! They told me they were just going to kidnap him for leverage!”
I walked slowly across the concrete, stopping two paces in front of his chair. I didn't draw a weapon. I didn't raise my voice.
“You gave them the security codes to the pediatric floor, Sal,” I said softly. My voice was a whisper, yet it carried over the sound of the rain hammering on the tin roof. “You knew my boy was lying in that bed with oxygen tubes in his nose. You knew his heart was weak.”
“I was desperate, Gabriel!” Sal wept, pulling frantically against the heavy nylon cords binding his wrists. “Five million dollars! The Venetians were going to send my fingers home in a box! You wouldn't give me another loan!”
“I wouldn't give you another loan because you were throwing money into roulette wheels while your family starved,” I told him coldly. I looked around at the seven captains standing in the shadows. “In this family, we forgive mistakes. We forgive lost shipments. We forgive lost turf. But we do not forgive treason against our blood.”
I signaled to Vincent.
Vincent stepped forward, pulling a heavy satellite phone from his pocket, dialing a number on speakerphone, and holding it out toward Sal.
The phone rang twice before a raspy, arrogant voice answered.
“Yeah?”
It was Dominic Valenti.
“Dominic,” I said clearly into the microphone.
Silence stretched across the line for three agonizing seconds.
“Moretti,” Valenti sneered, his tone dripping with fake warmth. “I heard there was a commotion up at Lenox Hill last night. Terrible business. Some rogue junkies tried to mess with your kid, huh? I was just about to send flowers.”
“I have Sal sitting in front of me, Dominic,” I said calmly.
Another pause. The cocky arrogance on the other end of the line faltered slightly.
“Sal’s a businessman,” Valenti muttered. “He made a deal.”
“He made a deal with a dead man,” I replied smoothly. “I’m calling to tell you that your three shipping terminals in Red Hook are currently burning to the ground. Your underboss was picked up in Queens twenty minutes ago, and your entire distribution network is being dismantled as we speak.”
“You crazy bastard!” Valenti screamed through the speaker, background noise exploding on his end—sirens, shouts, and gunfire ringing out over the line. “You think you can start a full-scale war in this city?! The Commission will destroy you!”
“The Commission gave me their blessing ten minutes ago,” I answered, my tone chillingly flat. “When I showed them the security footage of your hitmen trying to suffocate a six-year-old boy in a hospital bed, even your allies voted to erase your name from the ledger.”
Valenti’s breathing turned ragged. “Gabriel… wait… let’s talk—”
I hung up the phone and handed it back to Vincent.
I turned my eyes back to my cousin, Sal. He was shaking so hard the wooden chair rattled against the concrete floor.
“Gabriel… please…” Sal whispered, his eyes wide with absolute, pathetic terror. “For our mothers… please…”
“Your family will be taken care of,” I told him, stepping back toward the exit. “Their homes will be paid for. Their educations will be secured. But you, Sal… you don't exist anymore.”
I didn't look back as I walked out into the pouring rain. Two seconds later, a single shot echoed inside the warehouse, followed by heavy silence.
As I stepped into the rear of my Escalade, my private phone vibrated in my inner pocket.
I pulled it out. It was a text message from the estate’s security monitor, linked directly to the main residence.
[ESTATE SECURITY ALERT: PERIMETER BREACH - WEST TOWER]
My blood ran cold.
“Vincent!” I shouted, slamming my fist against the front partition. “Drive! The estate is under attack!”
Valenti hadn't just relied on his hospital plan. Realizing he was doomed, the paranoid bastard had dispatched a secondary suicide squad directly to my home while my main force was focused on the docks.
The Escalade tore through the rain-slicked streets of Long Island, sirens blaring, red lights flashing as we cleared eighty miles an hour down the highway. My mind raced with terrifying images—Daniel sleeping in his room, Elena standing in the hallway, unarmed, vulnerable, facing down desperate men with nothing left to lose.
“If a hair on her head is touched,” I growled through clenched teeth, pulling my spare magazine from my belt and slamming it into my weapon, “I will burn the entire borough of Brooklyn to ashes.”
Twenty minutes later, the armored SUV smashed through the breached front gates of the Moretti estate.
Smoke was billowing from the west wing garage. Two stolen delivery vans sat crashed near the front fountain, their doors open. The sound of heavy automatic fire was echoing from inside the main foyer.
I didn't wait for the vehicle to stop completely. I threw the door open, hit the wet gravel running, and charged through the shattered oak front doors of my home.
Inside, the grand entrance hall was a warzone. Two of my guards were firing from behind the marble staircase, suppressing three hitmen pinned near the dining room entrance.
“Where are they?!” I roared over the thunder of gunfire, dropping a shooter with two quick rounds to the chest.
“panic room!” the head guard screamed back, bleeding from a shoulder wound. “Miss Elena took the boy down to the lower vault when the perimeter alarms tripped! But two shooters broke through the basement hallway!”
My heart stopped.
The basement hallway led directly to the reinforced vault.
I sprinted past the marble stairs, plunging down the narrow stone stairwell leading into the basement wine cellar. The smell of copper, gunpowder, and broken oak filled the narrow space.
At the end of the corridor, outside the heavy steel blast door of the panic room, stood two hitmen. One was holding a heavy sledgehammer, trying to break the electronic keypad lock, while the other held a assault rifle trained on the door.
“Hey!” I roared from the dark stairwell.
Both men spun around.
I didn't give them a chance to aim. I opened fire, emptying my entire magazine into the corridor. The lead hitman crumpled instantly, his rifle clattering against the concrete. The second man fired off a wild spray of bullets that ricocheted off the stone walls above my head before three of my rounds caught him in the sternum, dropping him where he stood.
Silence returned to the basement, heavy and suffocating, punctuated only by the drip of broken water pipes and my own ragged breathing.
I reloaded my weapon with shaking hands, stepping over the fallen bodies, and approached the heavy steel door.
I tapped a four-digit override code into the bloody keypad.
The heavy hydraulic locks hissed, releasing pressurized air, and the massive steel door swung slowly outward.
Inside the small, brightly lit concrete room, Elena was kneeling in the corner, clutching Daniel tightly behind her back.
In her right hand, she was holding a heavy iron fire extinguisher, raised high over her head, ready to swing at whoever walked through that door. Her face was pale, her clothes dusted with concrete powder, her dark eyes filled with a ferocious, unyielding instinct.
When her eyes landed on me, standing in the doorway drenched in rain and gunpowder, the fire extinguisher slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the rubber floor mat.
“Gabriel,” she gasped.
I dropped my weapon to the floor, fell to my knees, and pulled them both into my arms.
May you like
Daniel wrapped his small arms tightly around my neck, sobbing into my collar, while Elena buried her face in my shoulder, her body trembling against mine. I wrapped my heavy arms around them both, holding them so tight I could feel their heartbeats pressing against my chest—two rhythms, fast and alive, merging with my own.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered into Elena’s hair, my voice cracking with an emotion I could no longer suppress. “I’ve got you both. It’s over. I swear to God, it’s over.”
