Chapter 3 - THE DOCKS AT MIDNIGHT
The private shipping yards at Pier 44 were a labyrinth of rusted cranes, towering stacks of multicolored metal containers, and blinding sodium-vapor lights that cut through the pouring rain like searchlights.
To the city of New York, Pier 44 was a legitimate logistics hub owned by Vance International.
To the underworld, it was the primary narcotics and contraband pipeline for the entire Eastern Seaboard—a pipeline that Alessandro Moretti had allowed Vincent Vance to operate under a fragile, heavily enforced truce for the past five years.
A truce that had just expired in a cold bedroom behind the rose garden.
The black armored Maybach slid through the security gates without stopping, the iron barrier snapping off its hinges as the heavy bumper clipped it at forty miles per hour. The car skidded across the wet asphalt of the pier, coming to a violent halt directly in front of the main warehouse loading bay.
The rear door opened.
Alessandro stepped out into the rain. He wasn't wearing a raincoat. The water plastered his dark hair to his forehead, soaking his white shirt through his open suit jacket, but he didn't feel the cold. He looked like an avenging angel carved out of stone and seawater.
Four armed guards from the warehouse rushed out, raising their submachine guns.
"Hold your fire! Hold—"
Before the lead guard could finish his sentence, Marco and three Moretti enforcers emerged from the front vehicle, their weapons drawn and firing with silenced efficiency. Four muffled thuds echoed through the cavernous space, and the guards dropped to the wet concrete without a sound.
Alessandro walked past their bodies as if they were nothing more than discarded trash.
He kicked open the heavy corrugated steel door of the main warehouse.
Inside, stacked high with pallets of electronics and crates of bootleg whiskey, Vincent Vance sat behind a massive mahogany desk, sipping scotch while two scarred enforcers stood behind him with their hands near their holsters.
Vincent looked up, his smug, self-satisfied smile freezing halfway across his face as he saw who was walking toward him.
"Alessandro?" Vincent stammered, standing up so fast his leather chair tipped backward onto the floor. "What the hell is the meaning of this? You can't just bust into—"
Alessandro didn't answer with words.
He crossed the sixty feet of concrete floor in five massive strides, vaulted directly over the top of the mahogany desk, and slammed both hands into Vincent’s chest, driving him backward through a stack of cardboard boxes.
The scotch bottle shattered on the floor, spreading amber glass and liquor everywhere.
Vincent gasped for air, his face turning purple as Alessandro’s heavy hand closed around his throat, pinning him to the concrete floor with the crushing weight of a hydraulic press.
"You son of a bitch," Vincent choked out, clawing frantically at Alessandro’s wrist. "You're violating the commission! The council will—"
"The council is dead, Vincent," Alessandro whispered, his voice so quiet, so devoid of human emotion, that it sounded like a death sentence being read in an empty cathedral. "You sent men to Sophia’s cottage. You threatened her child. You forced a poison down her throat inside my house."
Vincent’s eyes bulged with pure, unadulterated terror. "I... I don't know what you're talking about! What housekeeper? I didn't send—"
Alessandro pulled his Sig Sauer from his holster, pressed the cold steel barrel directly against the center of Vincent’s forehead, and cocked the hammer with a sharp, echoing click.
"Sophia told me before she died," Alessandro lied smoothly, his dark eyes burning into Vincent’s soul. "She gave me your name. She told me about the gate codes, about the bribes, about the threat to burn the cottage down around her daughter if she didn't help your men smuggle the cargo through the east wall."
"It wasn't me!" Vincent shrieked, tears springing to his eyes as he pissed his pants in absolute, pathetic panic. "It was the syndicate! The Russian delegation! They wanted leverage over your shipping routes! They said if we couldn't break your security from the inside, we couldn't take over the docks! I just gave them the contact!"
Alessandro’s finger tightened on the trigger. The pressure on the hammer was infinitesimal.
"Who among the Russians?" Alessandro demanded.
"Dmitri Petrov!" Vincent sobbed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched wail. "He's at the Grand Meridian Hotel penthouse right now! Suite 1200! They're planning a full assault on your estate tomorrow night while you're at the commission meeting!"
Alessandro stared down at him for a long, agonizing second.
Then, instead of pulling the trigger, he smashed the heavy steel butt of his pistol across the side of Vincent’s jaw.
Vincent’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed onto the concrete, unconscious and bleeding freely from a deep gash above his left ear.
Alessandro stood up, wiping a drop of blood off his knuckle with a silk handkerchief. He looked down at Marco, who stood waiting by the edge of the desk.
"Tie him up," Alessandro ordered coldly. "Leave him hanging from the harbor crane by his ankles so the morning commuters can admire him when the sun comes up."
"And the Russians at the Grand Meridian?" Marco asked, pulling a zip-tie from his jacket.
May you like
Alessandro turned toward the open warehouse door, watching the rain pour down over the dark, restless waters of the East River.
"Call the strike teams," Alessandro said, his voice cutting through the noise of the storm like a razor blade. "We are going to check into the Grand Meridian. And we are going to leave no survivors."
