Chapter 3 - The War at the DocksThe storm raged over Pier Forty-Two as three black armored SUVs pulled into the rusted, abandoned shipping warehouse overlooking the harbor.
Inside, tied to a heavy steel chair beneath a single overhead light, sat Bianca Moretti. Her white silk gala dress was ruined, torn, and stained with rain. Her dark mascara ran down her cheeks in heavy black tracks as she wept, her manicured hands trembling against the iron ropes binding her.
Standing thirty feet away in the shadows sat her father, Don Sal Moretti—a sixty-year-old mafia patriarch with graying hair, surrounded by four of his surviving lieutenants, all held at gunpoint by Dominic’s elite soldiers.
The heavy steel doors of the warehouse slid open, and Dominic Rossi walked into the light.
He didn't look angry. He looked entirely devoid of human soul—a walking storm of cold, calculated execution.
“Dominic!” Sal Moretti shouted, his voice cracking with age and terror. “This is madness! You can’t hold my daughter! We have an alliance! Our families have shared the port for thirty years!”
Dominic didn't answer. He walked up to Bianca, pulling the velvet pouch from his pocket, and dropped the platinum ring onto her lap.
Bianca gasped, flinching as if the metal had burned her skin.
“A pufferfish neurotoxin, Sal,” Dominic said, his voice echoing off the corrugated iron walls of the warehouse. “Delivered through a microscopic channel in a raw diamond. Designed to induce a fatal arrhythmia in an elderly woman.”
Sal Moretti froze. The blood drained entirely from his weathered face. He looked at his daughter, his eyes wide with horrified realization.
“Bianca...” Sal whispered, his jaw trembling. “What did you do?”
“She didn't act alone, Sal,” Dominic said, stepping between the father and daughter. “My intelligence team spent the last three hours auditing your shell accounts in Jersey. You signed off on the purchase of the chemical compound six weeks ago in Montreal.”
Sal fell to his knees, his hands raised in desperate supplication. “Dominic! Listen to me! It was a mistake! The New York syndicate was pressing us! They said you were getting too powerful, that your mother’s failing health was making you weak!”
Dominic pulled a sleek, silver-plated revolver from his coat. The click of the hammer drawing back sounded like a thunderclap in the quiet warehouse.
“My mother is a saint,” Dominic murmured, placing the cold steel barrel against Sal Moretti’s forehead. “And the maid you called a 'disgusting pig' has more honor in her little finger than your entire bloodline.”
“Dominic, please!” Bianca shrieked, weeping uncontrollably. “Don't kill him! Take the shipping docks! Take everything! Just let us go!”
Dominic looked down at Bianca, his eyes terrifyingly empty.
“The docks were already mine the moment you raised your hand in my house, Bianca,” Dominic said softly. “You wanted to make my mother disappear so you could take her place in my home.”
He lowered the gun from Sal’s forehead, stepping back into the shadow of his men.
“Marco,” Dominic said.
“Yes, Boss?”
“Seize every vessel, every warehouse, and every bank account registered to the Moretti family,” Dominic commanded. “Banish Sal and Bianca from the state of New York. If either of them steps foot east of the Hudson River ever again... execute them on sight.”
Dominic turned his back on the weeping heiress and her ruined father, walking back out into the rain toward his car.
As he opened the door of his SUV, his phone chimed.
It was a text from Dr. Vance at St. Jude’s Hospital:
She’s breathing on her own. The ventilator has been removed. She’s waking up.
May you like
Dominic’s heart gave a sudden, violent thud against his ribs. The cold, lethal fury that had consumed him for hours vanished instantly, replaced by a desperate, frantic need to be back by her side.
“To the hospital,” Dominic barked at his driver. “Now!”
