Chapter 8 - The Waterfront Exchange and the Hidden Wire
The cannery was a chaotic symphony of deafening gunfire and screaming metal. Bullets sparked against the rusted shipping crates in the pitch-black warehouse, casting terrifying strobe-light flashes across the room.
Adrian’s heavy body covered mine completely on the cold concrete. He smelled of sweat, expensive cologne, and the lingering acrid scent of the charcoal he’d vomited earlier.
“Frank!” Adrian yelled over the gunfire. “Where are you?!”
“I’m by the pillar!” my grandfather’s raspy voice echoed from our right. “I’m okay!”
Vittoria’s men were firing blindly, their muzzle flashes giving away their positions. Adrian, with the cold precision of a man raised in this violent world, rolled off me, raised his matte-black handgun, and fired twice.
Two distinct thuds told me two of Vittoria’s men had dropped.
“Hold your fire!” Vittoria screamed in the dark, realizing her men were giving away their locations.
The warehouse fell eerily silent, save for the sound of Lorenzo moaning in pain near the center of the room.
“Adrian,” Vittoria’s voice echoed, cold and calculating. “You can’t escape. The doors are blocked. Hand over the girl’s phone, give me the laptop, and I’ll make your death quick.”
“You’re pathetic, Vittoria,” Adrian called out, his voice bouncing off the metal walls, making it impossible to pinpoint his exact location. “The text is already sent. Every captain in Chicago knows you’re a fraud. By tomorrow morning, there will be a bounty on your head so high, your own bodyguards will put a bullet in your spine.”
“Then I guess I’ll just have to kill you all and burn this building to the ground,” Vittoria replied.
I heard the distinct, terrifying click of a lighter in the dark.
A small orange flame illuminated Vittoria’s face. She was standing next to a massive stack of wooden pallets, holding a flare.
But the flame also illuminated something else.
Lorenzo, bleeding and desperate, had crawled across the floor. He was clutching the waterproof duffel bag containing the laptop, and he was pointing his gun directly at Vittoria’s back.
“Go to hell, Vittoria,” Lorenzo spat.
He pulled the trigger.
Click.
The gun was empty.
Vittoria slowly turned around. She looked down at Lorenzo with absolute disgust.
“You always were a disappointment, Lorenzo,” she said softly.
She raised her submachine gun and fired a short, brutal burst. Lorenzo jerked violently on the concrete, the duffel bag slipping from his grasp, before lying completely still.
“No!” Adrian shouted, genuinely horrified by the brutal execution of the man who had raised him, regardless of his betrayal.
Vittoria picked up the duffel bag and tossed the burning flare onto the wooden pallets.
The dry wood caught instantly, illuminating the warehouse in an angry, dancing orange glow.
“Kill them,” Vittoria ordered her remaining two men, turning toward the exit.
The men raised their rifles, scanning the room in the newly illuminated light. They spotted Adrian and me behind a rusted forklift.
Before they could pull the triggers, the heavy steel doors of the cannery burst open with a deafening crash.
Headlights flooded the warehouse.
Isabella’s armored SUV roared into the building, smashing directly into the pallets and sending burning wood flying in every direction.
The two hitmen spun around, firing wildly at the vehicle.
Isabella didn’t even flinch. She slammed on the brakes, turning the wheel sharply. The heavy armored tail of the SUV swung around, slamming into the two hitmen and sending them crashing into the brick wall. They didn’t get up.
Vittoria froze in the doorway, staring in absolute shock at the armored vehicle.
The driver’s side door opened. Isabella stepped out, the silver revolver steady in her hand.
The two women—the biological mother and the woman who had stolen her children—stared at each other across the smoky warehouse.
“Isabella,” Vittoria breathed, her face contorting with rage. “You should have stayed dead.”
“I’m tired of playing dead, Vittoria,” Isabella said, her voice shaking with nineteen years of repressed fury. “You stole my children. You stole the man I loved. You took everything from me.”
“I made them strong!” Vittoria spat, gesturing wildly toward Adrian. “I made them royalty! If you had raised them, they’d be nothing but pathetic civilians serving pasta in some dump restaurant!”
“They would have been happy,” Isabella countered, stepping closer. “And they would have been safe.”
Vittoria let out a bitter laugh, raising the duffel bag. “Well, now I have the money, and you have nothing. I’m leaving, Isabella. If you shoot me, you’ll never know the decryption password to the ghost account.”
Isabella didn’t lower her gun. “I don’t care about the money.”
“But I do,” a voice growled from the shadows.
Matteo stepped out from behind the SUV.
Vittoria’s eyes widened. She took a step back, genuinely terrified to see her husband standing before her, looking like a vengeful ghost.
“Matteo,” Vittoria stammered.
“The password, Vittoria,” Matteo said, walking slowly toward her.
“You’ll never get it,” Vittoria sneered, raising her submachine gun toward Isabella.
Before she could pull the trigger, Adrian moved.
He didn’t shoot her. He simply threw the heavy, matte-black handgun he was holding directly at Vittoria’s face.
The heavy metal weapon struck Vittoria square in the nose with a sickening crunch. She screamed, dropping the submachine gun and stumbling backward, clutching her bleeding face.
Matteo closed the distance in two strides, kicking the submachine gun away and grabbing Vittoria by the collar of her trench coat.
“It’s over, Vittoria,” Matteo said quietly, looking into the eyes of the woman who had ruined his life.
The sound of police sirens, a massive, overwhelming chorus of them, began to wail outside the cannery.
“The cops?” Vittoria gasped, blood pouring down her chin. She looked at me, realizing the truth. “You didn’t text the captains. You texted the police.”
“I’m a waitress, Vittoria,” I said, stepping out from behind the forklift, my grandfather by my side. “I don’t have mob bosses in my contacts. But I do know how to dial 911 and leave an open line while a mafia queen confesses to a double homicide.”
Vittoria stared at me, sheer venom in her eyes.
She reached into her coat, pulling a small, silver derringer pistol from a hidden pocket. She aimed it directly at my chest.
“If I go down, you go with me, waitress,” Vittoria snarled.
A gunshot rang out.
But I didn’t feel anything.
Vittoria’s eyes went wide. She looked down at her own chest, where a blooming red stain was spreading across her white blouse.
She collapsed to her knees, the derringer slipping from her fingers, before falling face-first onto the concrete.
I looked past her falling body.
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Isabella stood with her silver revolver raised, smoke curling from the barrel.
She had fired the fatal shot to protect me.
