Chapter 7 - The Docks at Midnight
The rain had turned into a thick, blinding fog by the time twelve black cars formed a wide circle on the concrete pier at Dock 14.
The headlights of all twelve vehicles were turned on, pointing straight at the center of the pier like spotlights on a theater stage.
I wasn't supposed to be there.
Dominic had told Big Leo to lock the safe house doors from the outside. But I knew how to pop the latch on old red-brick basement windows—I’d done it three times when I forgot my house keys last winter.
I sat crouched inside the hollow body of an old rusty crane thirty yards away, wrapped in Marcus's spare oversized wool jacket, watching through the broken iron slats.
In the middle of the light circle stood two men.
Dominic Vance, dressed in his dark suit, his hands tucked casually into his coat pockets.
And Victor Valenti—an older man with thick silver hair, a heavy mink collar on his coat, and a face carved out of sour granite. Behind Victor stood ten men carrying submachine guns under their long jackets.
Between them lay Cruz Valenti, tied to a wooden chair, a bloody rag stuffed into his mouth, his eyes wide with wild, rolling terror.
"You broke the 1994 accord, Vance," Victor Valenti spat, his deep voice bouncing off the metal sides of the shipping containers. "You laid hands on my blood over a worthless neighborhood woman and a dead gambler's tabs."
"Your boy crossed Mercer Street," Dominic said calmly, not taking his hands out of his pockets. "He broke down a door in my district. He took a civilian."
"She owed money!" Victor roared, stepping forward until his polished leather boots were inches from Dominic's toes. "Her husband took twenty grand from my sports book in March! Debt travels down the bloodline, Vance! That's the law of the river!"
Dominic tilted his head slightly. "Not in my city it doesn't."
"Since when do you care about some poor widow from Mercer Street?" Victor sneered, waving his arm wildly toward the city skyline. "What did she give you, Dominic? Huh? A piece of her late husband's estate? A cut of her grocery money?"
Dominic reached into his vest pocket.
He pulled out the wrinkled five-dollar bill I had given him that afternoon on 5th Street.
He held it up between two fingers, letting the bright glare of the halogen headlights illuminate the green paper.
"Her son hired me," Dominic said, his voice echoing across the dark, oily water of the harbor. "He paid my fee in full. Which means as long as this bill sits in my vault, that family is under the personal protection of the Vance syndicate."
Victor stared at the five-dollar bill. Then he looked at Dominic’s face.
For five seconds, Victor didn't breathe. Then a dark, terrible laugh bubbled up from his chest, turning into a loud, booming roar that made his guards shift uncomfortably.
"Five dollars?" Victor laughed, tears forming at the corners of his eyes. "You started a turf war over five fucking dollars?!"
"It's not about the money, Victor," Dominic said, his voice dropping an octave into something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up even thirty yards away. "It's about respect. The boy had the guts to look me in the eye and demand justice. Your son didn't have the guts to fight someone his own size."
Dominic tossed the five-dollar bill onto Cruz Valenti's lap.
"The price to take your son home tonight is fifty thousand dollars," Dominic said coldly. "Twenty for the debt he tried to steal. Thirty for the inconvenience."
Victor’s laughter cut off like a snapped wire. "And if I say no?"
May you like
Dominic didn't answer with words. He simply raised his right hand.
From the shadows behind the crane, from the tops of the shipping containers, and from the edges of the fog, twenty more armed men stepped into the light, their rifles trained squarely on Victor Valenti’s chest.
