Chapter 7 - THE RIVERBANK RECKONING~1,100 words
The drainage tunnel was pitch black, cold, and narrow enough that Luna’s shoulders brushed against the damp brick walls with every frantic movement.
Water pooled around her knees, soaking through her clothes, but she didn't stop. She crawled on her hands and knees, ignoring the sharp scrape of stone against her skin, driven entirely by the sound of muffled gunfire echoing far behind her down the subterranean channel.
Luca.
The name beat in time with her racing pulse.
Please let him be alive. Please let him reach the boathouse.
After what felt like an eternity of crawling through suffocating darkness, a faint gray glow appeared at the end of the brick tube.
Fresh air—cool, river-scented, and sharp—hit her face.
Luna scrambled forward with a final burst of adrenaline, bursting out of the low iron drainpipe and tumbling down a muddy embankment into the tall reeds lining the Hudson River.
She landed hard in the mud, coughing and gasping for breath, her plain black dress ruined and her hands bleeding from scrapes.
She pushed herself up, wiping the mud from her eyes, and looked around.
Through the trees, the weathered wooden structure of the old Moretti boathouse stood silent against the pale moonlight.
Before she could take a step toward it, headlights suddenly cut through the darkness.
Two black SUVs came racing down the gravel access road, tires crunching loudly against the stones. They screeched to a halt right beside the boathouse.
Luna froze, ducking low behind a thick cluster of willow branches.
The doors of the lead SUV flew open. Vincent Torino stepped out, flanked by three armed enforcers.
Luna’s breath caught in her throat.
Vincent? Wasn't he back at the mansion? Why was he here by the river?
“Check the perimeter!” Vincent barked, his face twisted into an ugly snarl that completely stripped away his polite enforcer persona. “Dmitri wants the girl, and he wants the boy’s body floating in the river before sunrise!”
Dmitri.
The puzzle pieces snapped together with horrifying clarity in Luna’s mind.
Vincent Torino wasn't just Don Salvatore’s enforcer. He was the leak. He was the one who had given the hit team the military-grade relay box, bypassed the electronic gates, and led the assassins straight into the heart of the Moretti mansion.
He had sold out his own family for a slice of the Russian syndicate's shipping ports.
“Boss!” one of the enforcers shouted, pointing toward the edge of the woods. “Look! Footprints in the mud coming from the drainpipe!”
Vincent turned his sharp, calculating eyes toward the mouth of the drainage tunnel, right where Luna was hiding in the brush.
“Well, well, well,” Vincent smiled coldly, unholstering his heavy caliber pistol. “Looks like the little kitchen maid survived the party. Come on out, Luna. Save us the trouble of digging you out of the mud.”
Luna’s heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. She backed away slowly into the shadows of the willow tree, her fingers searching frantically for a heavy stone or a fallen branch.
There was nothing. Just mud and reeds.
“I know you’re in there, sweetheart,” Vincent’s footsteps crunched closer through the wet grass, slow and deliberate. “You really thought Luca was going to marry a nobody? He was just playing a game with his father. And now, thanks to your little stunt, the whole empire is coming down.”
The footsteps stopped just five feet away from her hiding spot.
Luna held her breath, closing her eyes as she prepared for the cold metal of a gun barrel to press against her head.
Suddenly, a sharp whistle cut through the night air from the opposite side of the clearing.
“Looking for someone, Vincent?”
A voice rang out from the shadow of the boathouse—cool, steady, and unmistakably alive.
May you like
Vincent spun around, his pistol raised.
Standing in the moonlight, leaning heavily against the wooden doorframe of the boathouse with a bleeding shoulder and a smoking Beretta in his hand, was Luca Moretti.
