Chapter 7 - The Ambush at the Docks
Chaos erupted across the Plaza ballroom.
Guests screamed and dropped to the floor as tables flipped. But Salvatore’s men were too slow. Before their hitmen could clear leather, Luca’s loyal enforcers, led by Marco and Matteo, moved with ruthless, synchronized precision.
Three shots barked from suppressed weapons, dropping Salvatore’s primary bodyguards instantly.
Luca grabbed Emma by the waist, shielding her body with his own as he drew his Glock, firing two center-mass shots that shattered the chandelier directly above Salvatore’s terrace, plunging the VIP section into darkness and falling debris.
“Matteo! Secure the perimeter!” Luca shouted over the din. “Marco, get Emma to the motorcade!”
“Luca, no!” Emma yelled, holding onto his lapels. “Salvatore slipped through the kitchen service exit! He has the backup drive containing the master codes for the Atlantic shipping terminals! If he reaches the docks in Brooklyn, he’ll board his private freighter and escape international jurisdiction!”
Luca looked into her eyes. There was no terror in her face—only fierce, burning resolve to finish what her father had started.
“Then we end it at the docks,” Luca said.
Thirty minutes later, the rain was coming down in sheets over the rusted shipping containers of the Red Hook marine terminal in Brooklyn. Fog rolled off the Atlantic, obscuring the hulking silhouette of a cargo ship idling at pier fourteen.
Salvatore Romano stumbled across the slick concrete, clutching a black briefcase to his chest. Behind him, Bianca sobbed hysterically, her red dress torn and soaked with black grime, her high heels abandoned somewhere along the highway.
“Papa, please! We have to leave the country!” Bianca cried.
“Shut up and run!” Salvatore barked, wheezing heavily.
Suddenly, twin sets of halogen headlights pierced the heavy fog, illuminating the Romanos like deer in the road.
Four black SUVs screeched to a halt, boxing them in against the edge of the pier. The cold Atlantic waves churned violently forty feet below the concrete bulkhead.
Doors opened. Luca stepped out into the pouring rain, accompanied by twenty heavily armed Moretti soldiers.
Beside him walked Emma, wearing Luca’s heavy wool overcoat over her green gown, her expression unyielding.
Salvatore backed up until his heels hit the edge of the pier. He dropped the briefcase, his hands trembling as he raised a snub-nosed revolver. “Stay back, Luca! I swear to God, I’ll pull you down with me!”
Luca didn't even draw his weapon. He kept walking toward them, slow, measured, and unstoppable as the tide.
“You’re out of moves, Salvatore,” Luca said, his voice cutting through the howl of the storm. “Your council allies abandoned you the second they saw your treason in black and white. Your ships are being seized by federal marshals right now. Your empire is gone.”
Bianca fell to her knees in the freezing mud, clutching her head in her hands. “Luca... please. It was my father’s idea! He forced me to do it! I loved you, Luca! Please don't kill me!”
Luca stopped five paces away, looking down at Bianca with pure disdain.
“You tied a defenseless woman to a chair and whipped her, Bianca,” Luca said softly. “You didn't love me. You loved power. And you were willing to bathe in blood to keep it.”
He turned his gaze to Emma. “What do you want done with them?”
Salvatore’s eyes widened in disbelief. The great Don Luca Moretti, the most feared man on the eastern seaboard, was deferring judgment to a former maid?
Emma walked forward, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Luca. Rain plastered her dark hair to her cheeks, but she had never looked more regal.
She looked at Salvatore Romano, the man who had driven her father to his grave and forced her to live like an animal for ten years.
“Death is too clean for you,” Emma said, her voice steady and clear against the wind. “My father died in prison for crimes you committed. It’s only right that you spend the rest of your miserable life in a maximum-security cell, watching everything you stole be returned to its rightful name.”
She glanced down at Bianca, shivering in the mud.
“And as for you, Bianca,” Emma added quietly, “you wanted so badly to be the queen of New York. Now you can watch from behind glass as someone else takes everything you thought you deserved.”
Sirens began to wail in the distance—dozens of federal cruisers and state police vehicles speeding toward the terminal, summoned by the anonymous evidence packet Luca’s team had delivered to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Salvatore dropped his gun. It clattered against the wet asphalt, harmless.
May you like
Luca looked at Marco. “Take their weapons. Hand them over to the feds when they arrive. Make sure every single piece of evidence Julian Carter gathered is on the prosecutor’s desk by sunrise.”
***
