Chapter 6 - THE VIPER IN THE NEST
The underground bunker vibrated as muffled explosions echoed from the surface. The Morettis had breached the main gates. Dominic had likely stood down the loyal guards or ordered them into a kill zone. I could almost smell the cordite bleeding through the concrete ceiling.
Silas finished wiring the detonator, backing away behind a heavy surgical table that we had overturned to use as a barricade. "Explosives are set, Boss. Trigger is manual. We wait for them to stack up outside the door, then... boom."
I checked the time on my Rolex. Five minutes had passed since Elena went down the chute. She would be in the smuggling tunnels by now, hopefully moving toward the East Wing access point to get to Emma. The thought of my daughter—the child I had only known for an hour but would gladly burn the world to protect—gave me a chilling sense of focus. I was no longer just a mafia boss protecting his territory. I was a father protecting his family.
"They're on the elevator," Silas whispered, pointing to the indicator light above the heavy steel door. The numbers were descending.
3... 2... 1...
The elevator dinged. Heavy footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. I heard the distinct sound of tactical gear, the clatter of assault rifles, and voices speaking in rapid, hushed Italian.
"Blow the lock," a gruff voice ordered from the other side. "Don Moretti wants his head on a pike."
"Silas," I murmured, my finger hovering over the trigger of my Glock.
"Wait for it," Silas replied, his thumb resting on the detonator button.
We heard the whine of a drill, then the muffled clump of breaching charge being slapped against the steel.
"Now," I commanded.
Silas pressed the button.
The explosion in the confined underground hallway was apocalyptic. The reinforced steel door didn't just open; it violently buckled outward, turning into a massive, jagged projectile. The shockwave blew out the observation window in a shower of deadly glass, ripping through the men stacked in the corridor.
Deafening silence followed, accompanied only by the ringing in my ears and the thick cloud of gray concrete dust filling the room.
I vaulted over the surgical table, coughing through the dust, my weapon raised. The corridor was a slaughterhouse. Five Moretti soldiers lay dead or dying, pulverized by the blast and the shrapnel of the steel door. I stepped over the bodies, putting a single insurance bullet into the head of anyone still twitching. Mercy was a luxury I had abandoned long ago.
"Clear!" Silas called out, stepping into the hallway with an assault rifle he had scavenged from a dead soldier.
"We take the stairs," I pointed to the emergency stairwell. "The elevator is a death trap. We need to reach the East Wing."
We moved like ghosts ascending through the bowels of the estate. The stairwell was clear, but as we kicked open the door to the ground floor, chaos greeted us.
Blackwood Estate, my ancestral home, was a warzone. The storm outside lashed against the massive floor-to-ceiling windows of the grand foyer, illuminating the darkness with jagged flashes of lightning. Gunfire echoed from the library and the dining room. My loyalists—the men who had realized Dominic was a traitor—were fiercely fighting a losing battle against the overwhelming numbers of the Moretti invasion force.
"Silas, take the high ground on the balcony! Provide covering fire!" I shouted over the din of automatic weapons.
Silas sprinted up the grand staircase, taking out two Moretti men who tried to intercept him. I dove behind a massive marble pillar as a hail of bullets chipped away at the stone, spraying dust into my face.
I peered around the edge. At the far end of the foyer, barking orders from behind the cover of a solid oak dining table, was Dominic. He was holding a submachine gun, screaming at the Moretti soldiers to push forward.
My blood boiled. This was the man who had eaten at my table. The man who had held my father's casket. The viper in the nest.
I didn't blind-fire. I waited for a lull in the shooting, stepped out from cover in a flawless weaver stance, and squeezed the trigger. Three shots. Precision over volume.
The first bullet took a Moretti soldier in the throat. The second shattered the chandelier above Dominic, sending a cascade of crystal raining down on him. The third clipped Dominic's shoulder as he dove out of the way, a spray of blood misting the air.
"Julian!" Dominic screamed, his voice cracking with pain and rage. "You're a dead man! There are fifty men converging on this house!"
"Then I'll build a mountain out of fifty corpses!" I roared back, reloading on the move as I advanced from pillar to pillar.
Suddenly, a massive explosion rocked the West Wing. The floor shook beneath my feet, and a fireball blew out the windows into the stormy night. The distraction was enough for Dominic to scramble toward the hallway leading to the East Wing.
The East Wing. Emma.
Panic seized my chest. "Silas! Hold the foyer!" I yelled, abandoning my cover and sprinting after Dominic.
I rounded the corner into the darkened hallway of the East Wing. The emergency lights were flickering, casting long, monstrous shadows on the walls. At the far end of the hall, standing in front of the guest room where I had left my daughter, was Harold.
The old butler was bleeding from a gunshot wound to his side, but he was holding a double-barreled shotgun leveled squarely at Dominic, who had frozen midway down the hall.
"Step away from the door, Dominic," Harold said, his voice remarkably steady for a man bleeding out on a Persian rug. "You shall not pass."
Dominic laughed, a wet, desperate sound, clutching his bleeding shoulder. "Old man, drop the antique. You're going to die for a boss who doesn't even know you exist."
"Mr. Vance knows exactly who I am," Harold replied. "And more importantly, I know exactly who is in this room. I made a promise to protect the Vance bloodline."
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Dominic raised his submachine gun to fire.
I didn't hesitate. I didn't warn him. I raised my Glock and emptied the rest of the magazine into Dominic's back.
