Chapter 4 - The Drop
~1,100 words
The radio crackled with static, but the silence in the hospital room was absolute.
Dominico stared at the heavy leather ledger resting on the table. He looked at Sophia, her chest rising and falling to the mechanical rhythm of the ventilator.
She had almost died to secure this ledger. She had taken two bullets to expose Vincenzo and Mateo’s treason. To hand it over now would be a betrayal of her sacrifice.
But Clara Hayes had stood between Dominico and his own rage. She had cared for his two-pound son as if he were her own. She was an innocent. In Dominico’s world, innocents were off-limits.
“Where?” Dominico growled into the radio.
“The old shipyard at Navy Pier. Warehouse 7,” Mateo replied, his voice dripping with smug satisfaction. “Come alone. Just you and the book. You bring Luca or any of your trigger-happy dogs, and the nurse gets a bullet in the head before you even park.”
The line went dead.
“You can’t go alone,” Luca said immediately, stepping in front of the door. “It’s a kill box, boss. Warehouse 7 has only one entrance and no blind spots. They’ll have snipers on the catwalks.”
“I know what it is, Luca. I built that warehouse.” Dominico picked up the ledger, tucking it under his arm. He checked the magazine of his Beretta and slid it into his holster. “And because I built it, I know about the drainage tunnels beneath the loading dock.”
Luca’s expression shifted.
“I’ll drive to the front,” Dominico instructed. “You take a ghost team through the storm drains. When I give the signal, you cut the main breakers and breach from the floor grates. But nobody fires until the nurse is clear.”
The drive to Navy Pier took twenty minutes, but it felt like hours. The November rain had turned into a torrential downpour, washing the neon lights of the city into blurry streaks across the windshield of Dominico’s SUV.
He pulled up to the rusted chain-link gates of Warehouse 7. He stepped out into the freezing rain, holding the ledger high enough to be seen.
The heavy corrugated metal doors groaned upward.
Dominico walked inside. The warehouse was cavernous, smelling of oil, salt, and damp concrete.
Mateo stood in the center of the floor, flanked by four men holding automatic rifles. Behind them, tied to a wooden chair, was Clara. Her scrubs were soaked with rain, her lip split and bleeding, but her eyes were defiant.
“Stop right there,” Mateo called out, his voice echoing off the high tin roof.
Dominico stopped, twenty feet away. He didn't look at the men with the rifles. He looked only at Mateo.
“I didn't think you’d actually come,” Mateo sneered, taking a step forward. “I thought the great Dominico Rossi didn't care about collateral damage.”
“I care about debts,” Dominico said, his voice slicing through the damp air. “She kept my son alive. That makes her family. And you know what I do to people who touch my family.”
Mateo laughed, but it was thin, laced with nervous energy. “Big words for a man whose empire belongs to me now.”
“You think this belongs to you?” Dominico lifted the ledger. “You’re an errand boy, Mateo. You’ve always been an errand boy. Uncle Vincenzo is holding the leash, and you’re just barking when he tells you to.”
Mateo’s jaw tightened. The mention of Vincenzo hit a nerve.
“Toss the book,” Mateo commanded, raising his handgun and pointing it directly at Clara’s head.
Dominico didn’t hesitate. He threw the heavy leather ledger across the concrete. It skidded to a stop at Mateo’s feet.
Mateo smiled, bending down to pick it up.
“Let her go,” Dominico demanded.
“Of course,” Mateo said, flipping through the pages to ensure it was the real book. “But I have strict orders from Vincenzo. No loose ends.”
Mateo raised his gun, pointing it not at Clara, but at Dominico’s chest.
Dominico didn't flinch. He reached into his coat pocket.
“Do you know what Sophia found in the pocket of the man who shot her, Mateo?” Dominico asked, his voice echoing loudly, carrying a specific cadence. The cadence of a signal.
Mateo hesitated. “What?”
Dominico pulled out the heavy gold pocket watch. Vincenzo’s watch.
“She found the truth,” Dominico said.
Before Mateo could process the object in Dominico’s hand, all the lights in the warehouse violently snapped off.
Pitch black.
Clara screamed. Mateo fired blindly into the dark, the muzzle flash illuminating the concrete for a fraction of a second.
But Dominico was already moving. He dove to the left, rolling behind a stack of rusted shipping crates.
From beneath the floorboards, the heavy iron grates exploded upward. Luca and his ghost team breached the room wearing night-vision goggles. Suppressed gunfire thwipped through the darkness. Two of Mateo’s men dropped instantly, their rifles clattering to the ground.
“Kill him! Kill Rossi!” Mateo screamed, stumbling backward in the dark, firing wildly.
Dominico sprinted through the shadows, using the muzzle flashes to track his targets. He closed the distance to the chair, grabbing Clara by the shoulders.
“Hold your breath,” he whispered, slicing the zip-ties binding her wrists with a tactical knife. He pulled her down behind a concrete pillar just as a barrage of bullets chewed the wooden chair to splinters.
The emergency lights flickered on, casting a dim yellow glow over the carnage.
Three of Mateo’s men were dead. The fourth was surrendering to Luca.
But Mateo was gone. The heavy steel side-door of the warehouse was swinging open, rain blowing in from the harbor.
Dominico stood up, his gun raised, staring at the open door.
He hadn't gotten Mateo, but he had Clara. And he still had the gold watch.
He knelt beside the trembling nurse. “Are you hurt?”
Clara shook her head, tears mixing with the blood on her chin. “I’m okay. He… he asked me questions, Mr. Rossi.”
“What kind of questions?”
“About Sophia. About her medical condition.” Clara looked up, her eyes wide with terror. “He asked if she was capable of speaking. If she could testify.”
Dominico’s blood ran cold.
If Vincenzo and Mateo knew Sophia was alive, they wouldn't stop. They would realize the ledger was just paper. The real threat to their treason was the woman lying in the hospital bed.
Dominico’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out.
It was a text from a burner number.
Checkmate, Nephew.
Dominico looked at Luca. “Call the clinic. Tell the guards to lock down Sophia’s room immediately.”
May you like
Luca pressed his earpiece, his face going pale. He looked at Dominico.
“Boss… the clinic guards aren't answering.”
