Chapter 8 - THE WRATH OF THE DUCA
The Volkov Syndicate operated out of a massive, heavily fortified warehouse complex on the edge of the northern shipping docks. The rain continued to pour, washing the blood from Lorenzo’s tactical vest as he stepped out of his black SUV, three blocks away from the compound.
He did not bring an army. An army made noise. An army triggered alarms. Lorenzo was a ghost, a remnant of the brutal, wet-work operative he had been in his youth before he inherited the family throne.
He slipped through the shadows of the shipping containers, moving silently toward the rear loading docks. He bypassed the external patrols, slipping a garrote wire around the neck of a smoking guard, lowering the body into the dark waters of the harbor without a sound.
He breached the facility through a ventilation shaft on the roof, dropping silently into the catwalks above the main warehouse floor.
Below him, dozens of Volkov men were scrambling, shouting in Russian, desperately trying to organize a second wave of attacks or prepare for a counter-assault. In the center of the chaos stood Viktor Volkov, screaming into a radio, demanding to know why his elite basement team had gone silent.
Lorenzo did not fire wildly into the crowd. He was a surgeon, cutting out a cancer.
He pulled the pin on a flashbang grenade and dropped it into the center of the warehouse. The deafening crack and blinding white light plunged the room into absolute pandemonium. Before their eyes could adjust, Lorenzo dropped from the catwalk, his silenced pistol coughing quietly in the dark.
He moved through the smoke like a wraith. He didn't aim for the foot soldiers; he aimed for the lieutenants. The men shouting orders. The men holding the radios. He systematically dismantled the Volkov command structure in less than three minutes, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.
The foot soldiers, terrified by the invisible, silent death stalking them in the smoke, broke discipline and fled the warehouse, running blindly into the rainy night.
When the smoke finally began to clear, only two men remained in the center of the massive room.
Viktor Volkov, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the leg, and Lorenzo Duca, standing ten feet away, his gun leveled directly at the Russian’s chest.
Volkov dropped his empty rifle, glaring at Lorenzo with pure, unadulterated hatred. "You're a dead man, Duca. The Bratva will send a thousand men to avenge me."
"Let them come," Lorenzo said, his voice echoing in the cavernous warehouse. "I will bury them next to you. You made a mistake, Viktor. You thought my grief made me weak. You thought a dying son made me an easy target. But you forgot one fundamental rule of nature."
Lorenzo stepped closer, the muzzle of his gun pressing against Volkov’s forehead.
"Nothing is more dangerous than a father protecting his child."
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Lorenzo pulled the trigger.
The Volkov Syndicate died in the rain, headless, broken, and completely erased from the underworld map. Lorenzo turned his back on the carnage, walked out into the storm, and drove home to his son.
