Chapter 8 - BLOOD ON THE MARBLE
The ceramic blade missed Salvatore’s throat by two inches, slicing through the midnight-blue wool of his lapel and spraying a thin spray of crimson across his white shirtfront.
Salvatore didn't groan. He didn't stumble. He caught the attacker’s wrist in a grip that splintered the radius bone with an audible CRACK. In the same fluid motion, he drove his palm upward into the man’s nasal cartilage, driving bone fragments into the braincase. The assassin collapsed like a marionette with severed strings.
The second attacker lunged from Orion’s blind spot.
Orion didn't cower. She grabbed a heavy, lead-crystal ice bucket from a passing waiter’s abandoned tray and swung it with both hands, using every ounce of her core strength.
The crystal shattered across the side of the shooter’s skull in an explosion of ice cubes, water, and glass. The man staggered sideways, blood pouring from his ear, long enough for Carlo to arrive from the rear flank like a freight train. Carlo’s heavy fist slammed into the man’s jaw, knocking him cold before he hit the marble.
“Up! Mezzanine!” Carlo roared over the shrieking alarms, his suppressed pistol finally clearing his vest as the crowd evacuated into the street. “Dante is heading for the roof access!”
“Take Orion to the car!” Salvatore commanded, holding his hand against the gash on his chest, blood soaking through his fingers.
“No!” Orion shouted, grabbing his wrist. “The main doors are blocked by the stampede! Dante’s men are waiting in the alley! I saw them positioning the black vans before we walked in!”
Salvatore looked at her through the flashing emergency lights. His face was pale from blood loss, his eyes burning with an incandescent, terrifying rage. “Orion, get out!”
“We go together or we don't go at all!” she yelled back, her emerald dress soaked at the hem by sprinkler water, her diamond earrings catching the strobe light. “My father didn't die for me to run from Dante Moretti twice!”
Salvatore stared at her for a single, breathless second. Then a savage, triumphant grin broke across his bloody lips.
“Service stairs,” Salvatore ordered. “Carlo, cover our flank!”
They raced through the double catering doors into the industrial belly of Cipriani. The scent of truffles was replaced by grease, bleach, and the cold draft of winter air rushing down the service shaft. They climbed the metal stairs, two flights at a time, the sound of boots pounding behind them echoing through the concrete stairwell.
They burst through the heavy steel door onto the roof.
The rain was freezing, turning into sleet that stung their bare faces like needles. Fifty stories above 42nd Street, the Manhattan skyline was a jagged wall of black glass and neon blurred by the winter squall.
Dante Moretti stood near the helipad, clutching a leather briefcase, his white tuxedo ruined by soot and rain. His private Sikorsky S-76 helicopter was idling on the pad, its twin turbine engines whining as the rotor blades began their slow, rhythmic sweep through the sleet.
Beside Dante stood Marcus Stone, holding a nickel-plated .45 revolver.
“End of the line, Salvatore!” Dante screamed over the roar of the rotors. “You think the feds can touch me in Nassau? I have four hundred million in offshore accounts and three private airstrips waiting!”
Stone raised the revolver, aiming straight at Salvatore’s heart.
Salvatore stepped forward, pushing Orion behind his broad shoulder, completely unconcerned with the barrel pointed at his chest.
“Stone,” Salvatore called out, his voice cutting through the rotor wash with absolute authority. “You’ve served the Moretti family for twenty years. You served alongside Thomas Miller.”
Stone’s hand wavered slightly, his eyes flicking toward Orion standing in the rain, shivering in her torn emerald silk.
“Thomas was a traitor,” Stone muttered, though his voice lacked conviction.
“Thomas was an honest man who refused to sell poison to your children’s high school,” Orion said, stepping out from behind Salvatore, facing the gun without blinking. “You know it, Marcus. You were there the night Dante ordered the fire at Red Hook. You were the one who unlocked the back gate so my father could get out—only Dante locked it from the outside.”
Stone’s eyes widened with sudden, suffocating horror. He turned his head toward Dante. “You told me Miller died in the collapse. You told me he was already gone before the fire started.”
“Shoot him, Marcus!” Dante shrieked, backing toward the helicopter’s open door. “Shoot them both! I’ll give you five million in bearer bonds right now!”
Stone looked at the revolver in his hand, then at the trembling, desperate coward in the white suit, and finally at Orion Miller—standing in the freezing rain with her chin lifted, looking just like the gunner’s mate who had saved his life twice in the Persian Gulf.
Slowly, deliberately, Stone lowered the gun.
“You lied to me, Dante,” Stone said quietly.
“Traitor!” Dante screamed. He reached inside his ruined coat, pulled a snub-nosed .38 revolver, and pointed it at Stone’s face.
BANG.
Stone crumpled onto the wet tar, clutching his shoulder.
Dante spun, leveling the gun at Orion. “If I’m going down, Miller, you’re coming with me!”
He never pulled the trigger.
Salvatore closed the fifteen-foot gap in the space of a heartbeat. He didn't use a weapon; he hit Dante like a locomotive, driving his shoulder into Dante’s chest and slamming the older man against the chain-link perimeter fence that hung over the five-hundred-foot drop to 42nd Street.
The gun clattered away, spinning across the wet gravel.
Dante hung suspended over the abyss, his legs dangling into empty air, his hands clawing frantically at Salvatore’s forearms. Below them, the yellow cabs on the avenue looked like crawling insects through the mist.
“Salvatore! Please!” Dante sobbed, the rain washing the grease from his silver hair. “We’re family! Your father and I—we built this city! You can’t do this!”
Salvatore held him by the lapels of his white coat with one hand, his arm locked like an iron strut. His amber eyes were black with the finality of judgment.
“My father built this city on honor, Dante,” Salvatore whispered into the howling wind. “You built it on corpses.”
Salvatore looked back over his shoulder.
Orion stood ten feet away, the rain streaming down her face, her chest heaving, watching the man who had destroyed her childhood hang above his grave.
“Orion,” Salvatore called out over the wind. “Does he drop?”
Dante looked at her, his eyes wild with terror, his teeth chattering in the freezing sleet. “Orion! Please! In your father’s name! Mercy!”
Orion walked slowly across the gravel, her wet shoes crunching against the tar. She stopped three feet from the ledge, looking down at the shivering monster who had stolen her father, her home, and five years of her brother’s breath.
“My father didn't believe in executioners, Mr. Moretti,” Orion said, her voice clear, cold, and utterly steady. “He believed in the law. Let the feds take whatever is left of you.”
Salvatore looked at her, searching her face for a second. A slow, respectful nod passed between them.
With a grunt of disgust, Salvatore hauled Dante backward over the railing and slammed him face-down onto the concrete roof. He planted one polished oxford onto Dante’s shoulder blades, took out his phone, and tapped a single speed-dial number.
May you like
“Agent Miller,” Salvatore said into the mic. “Come up to the roof. The trash is ready for collection.”
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