Chapter 7 - War in Red Hook
At 3:15 AM, the rain over the Brooklyn waterfront fell in heavy, blinding sheets.
The abandoned cold-storage facility on Pier 42 was a rusting, dark monolith looming over the black waters of the East River. Inside, six of Volkov’s heavily armed mercenaries guarded Frankie’s sister, who sat tied to a chair in the center of a cavernous concrete bay.
On the second-floor gantry overlooking the bay stood Dimitri Volkov himself.
Volkov was fifty-two years old, a towering Russian with a scarred face, wearing a heavy leather coat. He was smoking a thick cigar, listening to a satellite phone pressed to his ear.
“He is weak?” Volkov asked into the phone, his thick accent dripping with arrogant satisfaction. “Good. Tell your men to breach the north wall at 0400. Bring me Moretti’s head, and bring the girl alive. I want Adrian to watch his bloodline end before he dies.”
Volkov hung up the phone, tossing his cigar butt onto the concrete floor.
Suddenly, every light in the building died.
Total, pitch-black darkness enveloped the warehouse.
“What the hell?” a mercenary yelled from the main floor, clicking on his weapon-mounted flashlight. “Generator’s down!”
Before the light could sweep the room, a muffled gunshot echoed through the high ceilings.
POP.
The mercenary holding the flashlight collapsed onto his back, a red hole blooming between his eyes.
Panic erupted.
“Contact! We’re under attack!” another guard screamed, spraying automatic fire wildly into the dark rafters.
From the shadows, Adrian Moretti moved like an executioner. Wearing night-vision goggles, a tactical vest over his surgical bandage, and wielding a suppressed submachine gun, he cleared the ground floor with brutal, terrifying efficiency.
POP-POP-POP!
Two more guards fell before they could locate the source of the fire. Vincent and a four-man strike team breached the rear loading doors, sweeping through the side corridors, neutralizing the remaining sentries in under ninety seconds.
On the gantry above, Volkov realized the trap too late.
“Curse you, Moretti!” Volkov roared, grabbing his heavy revolver, grabbing Frankie’s weeping sister by her hair, pulling her up as a human shield as he backed toward the gantry’s emergency exit.
“Drop the weapon, Volkov!” Vincent’s voice boomed from the shadow of the main floor stairs, his rifle trained on the Russian’s head, but he couldn't fire without hitting the hostage.
Volkov laughed—a wet, hysterical sound. “Shoot me, Russo! Shoot me and kill the girl! Adrian is a dead man anyway! His heart is rot! He’s hiding in his estate like a wounded dog!”
“I’m right here, Dimitri.”
Volkov froze.
From the shadows behind him on the second-floor gantry, a tall figure stepped into the dim beam of moonlight filtering through a broken skylight.
Adrian stood ten feet away. His face was cold, his posture straight, his SIG Sauer aimed directly at Volkov’s exposed right shoulder.
Volkov’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief. “How... how are you alive? Frankie said—”
“Frankie lied,” Adrian said softly.
Volkov slammed his arm around the girl’s neck, turning his body, aiming his revolver toward Adrian’s chest. “You think a heart surgery makes you a god, Moretti?! I will rip that chest open with a bullet!”
Volkov squeezed the trigger.
BANG!
The heavy bullet struck Adrian square in the center of his chest.
The impact slammed Adrian backward against the steel handrail. The kinetic force fractured his ribs and sent a massive shockwave directly into his chest patch.
Instantly, Adrian’s heart went into a violent, chaotic spasm—entering lethal fibrillation once again.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
Adrian collapsed to one knee, gasping for air, his vision turning completely red as his heart stopped pumping oxygen.
Volkov raised his gun to finish him, a triumphant grin spreading across his scarred face. “Die, dog!”
Suddenly—
BZZZZZZT!
Inside Adrian’s chest, the newly implanted dual-chamber ICD detected the lethal rhythm. Automatically, it delivered a thirty-joule electrical shock directly into his cardiac muscle.
Adrian’s chest jolted violently.
His heart slammed back into a powerful, perfectly synchronized, adrenaline-fueled rhythm.
BAM!
Adrian’s eyes snapped open—flashing with a fierce, terrifying fire. Before Volkov could react, Adrian lunged forward from his knee, grabbing Volkov’s gun arm, twisting it upward with bone-snapping force.
CRACK!
Volkov screamed as his revolver dropped to the floor. Adrian shoved Frankie’s sister out of the way, caught Volkov by the throat, and slammed the heavy Russian back against the gantry handrail.
“My heart doesn't stop anymore, Dimitri,” Adrian growled into his face, his voice echoing across the empty warehouse. “It was rebuilt to kill men like you.”
Adrian raised his pistol, jamming the cold steel barrel directly under Volkov’s jaw.
“For my daughter,” Adrian whispered.
POP.
The heavy Russian went limp, tumbling backward over the handrail, falling twenty feet to the concrete floor below with a heavy, final thud.
Silence descended over the cold-storage facility.
Vincent rushed up the gantry stairs, catching Adrian as he swayed slightly against the railing, blood soaking through his shirt from the impact of the bullet against his tactical vest.
“Boss! Are you alright?!” Vincent asked frantically.
Adrian reached up, touching his chest where the internal device was humming quietly, keeping his heart steady, strong, and alive.
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He looked down at the lifeless body of Dimitri Volkov on the floor below.
“It’s over,” Adrian breathed, pulling off his night-vision goggles, looking out the broken skylight at the first golden rays of dawn breaking over the New York harbor. “Call the clean-up team. Transfer every asset into Sarah’s trust. I’m going home.”
