Chapter 8 - SINS OF THE FATHER
The gunshot was deafening.
I waited for the darkness to take me, waited for the final, cold embrace of death that I had courted for five years. But the pain never came.
Instead, the Moretti soldier standing over me suddenly jerked forward, a look of absolute confusion masking his features, before a blossom of blood erupted from his chest. He collapsed beside me, dead.
I blinked, fighting the disorientation of the flashbang. Through the ringing in my ears, I heard the heavy, rhythmic thud of combat boots on stone. A figure stepped out of the shadows of the tunnel, lowering a smoking assault rifle.
It was Vincent.
He was bruised, his suit torn, and he looked terrified, but his eyes were grimly determined.
"Vincent?" I croaked, struggling to push myself up on my elbows.
"You really think I’d let Dominic frame me and get away with it?" Vincent spat, offering me a hand. He hauled me to my feet, grunting under my weight. "I broke out of the interrogation cell when the explosion hit the West Wing. The whole house is crawling with Italians, Julian. Silas is holding the foyer, but he won't last long. I saw Dominic's body upstairs. Good riddance."
I leaned against the cold, wet cavern wall, trying to shake the cobwebs from my brain. "Elena and the girl. They got away."
"Good," Vincent nodded sharply. "Because Don Moretti just arrived. He’s in your study, tearing the place apart looking for the ledgers. He brought his elite guard. If we run now, we might survive. We have offshore accounts, safe houses in Europe..."
"I'm not running, Vincent," I said, my voice hardening, the fog in my mind instantly vaporizing at the mention of Moretti's name. The man who had ordered the warehouse fire. The man who had forced Elena into five years of miserable hiding. The man who had terrorized my daughter.
"Julian, you're bleeding," Vincent pointed to my thigh. "We have five men left against fifty. It's suicide."
"It's not suicide. It's an extermination." I picked up an assault rifle from one of the dead soldiers on the cave floor, checking the magazine. Full. I grabbed several spare mags from their tactical vests, shoving them into my pockets.
I looked at Vincent. "You saved my life. Your debt to this family is paid. You can take the tunnels out, steal a car, and disappear. I won't hold it against you."
Vincent stared at me, his jaw tightening. He looked at the dead men, then at the rifle in my hand. Slowly, he reached down and picked up the second dead man's weapon.
"I’m the CFO of this syndicate, Julian," Vincent said with a grim smirk. "And according to my calculations, letting the Morettis take our territory is bad for my bottom line. Let's go kill a Don."
We moved back into the tunnels, a silent, deadly two-man army. My leg burned with every step, but the pain was fuel. We ascended the stairs, slipping past the hidden bookshelf and back into the guest room. The house was quieter now. The initial chaotic firefight had turned into a methodical search. The Morettis thought they had won. They thought the dragon of Blackwood Estate was dead.
They were wrong.
We moved down the hallway, using the flickering shadows to our advantage. Two guards were patrolling near the grand staircase. I tapped Vincent's shoulder and held up three fingers. Three, two, one.
We stepped out in unison. Two silenced bursts from our scavenged rifles, and the guards dropped without a sound.
"Clear," Vincent whispered.
"The study is on the second floor, South Wing," I murmured. "Moretti will have his best men guarding the door. We can't just kick it down."
"I have an idea," Vincent said, pulling a frag grenade from his pocket that he must have lifted from the armory. "You go up the main stairs. I'll take the servant's staircase, flank them from the library. When you hear the boom, you breach."
I nodded. It was a solid tactical plan. For a guy who usually handled spreadsheets, Vincent was proving to be remarkably dangerous.
I moved silently up the grand, sweeping staircase, avoiding the creaking steps I knew by heart. When I reached the second-floor landing, I peered around the marble balustrade.
Four heavily armed men in sharp suits were standing outside the heavy oak double doors of my study. They were relaxed, smoking cigarettes, confident in their victory.
Suddenly, from the opposite end of the hallway, a metallic object clattered across the hardwood floor.
The guards turned, their weapons raising instantly. "Grenade!" one of them shrieked.
The explosion shattered the antique windows of the hallway, blowing two of the guards off their feet. Before the smoke could even clear, I stepped out from the landing, my rifle raised. I dropped the two remaining standing guards with precision double-taps to the chest. The two on the ground were moaning in pain. I stepped over them, offering no mercy, putting a single round into each of their heads.
I stood before the doors of my study. The doors my father had built. The doors that held the secrets of my empire.
I kicked them open with my good leg, stepping into the room with my weapon raised.
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Don Lorenzo Moretti was standing behind my mahogany desk. He was an older man, his silver hair slicked back, wearing a tailored three-piece suit. He held a glass of my scotch in one hand, and a gold-plated revolver in the other. He didn't look surprised to see me. He looked disappointed.
"Julian," Moretti said, taking a slow sip of the whiskey. "You just don't know when to die."
