Chapter 8 - THE WOODEN ROSARY
The warehouse erupted into a deafening warzone.
Dante unleashed hell with his shotgun, the massive blasts tearing through the first wave of Vincenzo’s men, sending them flying backward into the rain. Luca fired with lethal precision from behind a stack of steel shipping crates, dropping two mercenaries before they could even raise their weapons.
“Flank them!” Vincenzo screamed from the safety of the perimeter, his voice distorted by the megaphone.
Bullets rained against the steel crates, deafening Luca and showering him with sparks and ricochets. The sheer volume of incoming fire was overwhelming. They were pinned down.
“Two minutes!” Dante yelled over the gunfire, his eyes darting to the laptop screen where the progress bar crawled agonizingly slow. 65%... 70%...
Elena crouched behind the steel table, her hands gripping the iron crowbar so tightly her knuckles were white. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying for the progress bar to move faster.
Suddenly, a shadow dropped from the catwalk above them.
One of Vincenzo’s assassins had breached the roof. He landed silently behind Dante, raising a suppressed pistol toward the back of the big man’s head.
“Dante, look out!” Elena screamed.
She didn’t hesitate. Elena lunged forward, swinging the heavy iron crowbar with all the strength in her body. The iron connected with the assassin’s knee with a sickening crunch.
The man howled in pain, his shot going wide, shattering the laptop monitor.
Dante spun around, driving the butt of his shotgun into the assassin’s face, knocking him out cold.
Dante looked at the shattered monitor in horror. “The screen is dead!”
“Did the file send?!” Luca yelled, reloading his pistol behind the crate.
“I don’t know! The hard drive is still running, but I can’t see the progress!” Dante panicked.
Before they could check the server, a tear gas canister bounced across the concrete floor, hissing violently as it released a thick, blinding cloud of chemical smoke into their cover.
Luca coughed violently, his eyes burning like fire. He fired blindly into the smoke, trying to keep the mercenaries at bay, but his vision was completely compromised.
Strong hands suddenly grabbed Luca from behind, ripping the gun from his grip. A rifle butt slammed into his temple, sending him crashing to the concrete floor in a daze of pain and flashing lights.
Through the stinging smoke, Luca heard Elena scream as two men grabbed her, dragging her out from behind the table. Dante was fighting like a cornered bear, tossing men aside, but a heavy taser dart struck him in the chest, dropping the giant to his knees in agonizing convulsions.
The gunfire stopped.
The smoke slowly began to clear, drifting out into the rainy night.
Luca groaned, trying to push himself up, but a heavy combat boot slammed into his back, pinning him to the floor. Cold steel pressed against the back of his neck.
“Well fought, nephew,” a smooth, cultured voice said.
Luca turned his head.
Uncle Vincenzo walked into the warehouse, stepping carefully over the bodies of his own men. He wore a pristine cashmere overcoat, not a drop of rain or blood on him. He looked down at Luca with a look of profound disappointment.
“You broke your father’s heart, Luca,” Vincenzo lied smoothly for the benefit of his surviving men. “Murdering him in cold blood, burning the family estate to hide your treason. And for what? This waitress?”
Vincenzo gestured to Elena. Two massive guards were holding her by the arms, forcing her to her knees. Her lip was bleeding, but she glared up at Vincenzo with a hatred so pure it seemed to glow in the dark.
“She isn’t a waitress, Vincenzo,” Luca spat, blood dripping from his chin. “She’s Thomas Bellini’s daughter. She’s Maria’s daughter. You’re looking at the blood of the woman you murdered fourteen years ago.”
A ripple of uneasy whispers passed through Vincenzo’s mercenaries. They were paid killers, but family bloodlines meant something in this world.
Vincenzo’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second, his dark eyes flashing with genuine surprise before he quickly masked it with cruel amusement.
“Is that right?” Vincenzo chuckled, walking over to Elena. He reached out and grabbed her chin, tilting her face up to the harsh overhead lights. “Fascinating. You do have her eyes. A pity. Your mother was a beautiful woman, until she decided to become a rat.”
Vincenzo let go of her face in disgust. He turned to one of his men holding a sledgehammer.
“Smash the laptop,” Vincenzo ordered. “Smash the servers. Destroy everything in this room. And then put a bullet in all three of them.”
As the guard raised the sledgehammer toward the laptop, a small, rhythmic beeping sound echoed from the shattered machine.
Vincenzo frowned. “What is that?”
Dante, still twitching from the taser, let out a bloody, triumphant laugh from the floor.
“That’s the sound of the payload delivering, you son of a bitch,” Dante grinned.
Vincenzo’s eyes widened in horror. He lunged toward the table just as the laptop let out a loud, final BEEP.
The external hard drive whirred to a stop. The upload was complete.
“No!” Vincenzo roared, grabbing the laptop and smashing it against the concrete floor over and over again in a blind panic.
But it was too late.
In that exact moment, across the city, ten thousand emails landed in the inboxes of federal prosecutors, investigative journalists, and rival cartel bosses. The evidence of Vincenzo’s human trafficking empire, his bribes, and his murders was now public knowledge. His political shields were gone. His mafia protection was void. He was a dead man.
“You ruined everything!” Vincenzo screamed, pulling a gold-plated Desert Eagle from his coat and aiming it directly at Luca’s head. His charming facade was completely gone, replaced by the rabid, frothing desperation of a trapped animal. “I will kill you!”
“Hey!” a voice shouted.
Vincenzo snapped his head toward Elena.
Elena wasn’t kneeling anymore. In the chaos of the upload finishing, she had managed to slip her hand into her pocket.
She held up the wooden rosary.
Vincenzo stared at it, confused. “A rosary? Are you praying for a quick death, little girl?”
“No,” Elena said coldly. “I’m praying for yours.”
She gripped the silver cross and twisted it sharply. But this time, she didn’t open the hidden compartment. She pulled the cross completely off the beaded chain.
Attached to the silver cross was three feet of razor-thin, high-tensile garrote wire, hidden inside the hollow wooden beads. Thomas Bellini’s final weapon.
Before the guards holding her could react, Elena whipped the wire forward. The razor-sharp wire wrapped instantly around the throat of the guard on her left. She yanked backward with all her might.
The guard dropped his weapon, clutching his bleeding throat in agony, collapsing to the floor.
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The distraction was exactly what Luca needed.
With a primal roar, Luca twisted his body, grabbing the ankle of the guard standing on his back, snapping the joint. He rolled, snatched the fallen guard’s pistol from the concrete, and aimed it directly at his uncle.
