Chapter 8 - The Siege of Gold Coast
I turned back toward the hallway, my chest burning, my blood pumping with a lethal, unstoppable rage.
Anthony Moretti had attacked my home. He had put my sons in danger. He had brought war to the place where my children were learning to walk again.
He had committed his last mistake.
I strode down the grand staircase into the smoke-filled foyer like an apex predator returning to his hunting grounds.
Frank Rossi was crouched behind a overturned mahogany table, reloading his submachine gun, blood trickling from a graze on his forehead.
"Andrew!" Frank yelled over the deafening gunfire. "There's six more coming through the courtyard doors! Anthony is in the lead car!"
"Keep them pinned in the courtyard, Frank!" I shouted back, stepping up beside him and leveling my pistol through the smoke. "Nobody leaves this driveway alive!"
For twenty minutes, the Gold Coast mansion became a fortress of iron and fire. My trained enforcers, fighting for their home and their boss, methodically cut down the Moretti mercenaries. Tactical precision erased brute force.
When the smoke finally cleared, five mercenary bodies lay across the marble steps, and the remaining three vehicles were burning in the driveway.
Outside in the courtyard, Anthony Moretti was dragging his bleeding body out of a wrecked SUV, trying desperately to crawl toward the open iron gates.
I walked down the marble steps into the cool autumn air, my boots crunching over broken glass and spent shell casings. Frank walked beside me, holding a heavy shotgun.
Anthony looked up, his face covered in blood, his eyes wide with absolute, pathetic terror as my shadow fell over him.
"Andrew... please..." Anthony gasped, spitting blood onto the gravel. "It was New York... New York ordered the hit... they said you were weak..."
I stood over him, looking down with cold, emotionless grey eyes.
"I told you three months ago, Anthony," I whispered, pulling back the hammer of my pistol. "If you ever brought violence near my sons again, I would erase your name."
"Andrew, wait—"
BANG.
The gunshot echoed over the quiet Gold Coast neighborhood, cutting through the autumn air, bringing a final, absolute end to the Moretti threat in Chicago.
May you like
I turned my back on the body, holstering my gun.
"Clean up the driveway, Frank," I ordered calmly. "Call the city commissioner and tell him the Moretti family is officially out of business. I have a family to get back to."
