Chapter 6 - Betrayal at the Docks
The humiliation at the gala broke Julian Moretti’s sanity.
Realizing he could never defeat Dante in front of the Shipping Council, Julian decided to strike a coward’s blow.
Two days later, a messenger arrived at the estate while Dante was in an emergency meeting with his river capos on the North Shore.
The messenger handed Rosie an urgent, handwritten note stamped with the seal of the Shadyside medical clinic.
Rosalie, the note read. Your aunt Martha suffered a severe fall at her new apartment. She is being held at Warehouse 14 on Pier Nine for medical transport. Come immediately.
Panic blinded Rosie’s judgment. Without waiting for Tomas or leaving a message for Dante, she grabbed her coat, her crutch, and hailed a yellow taxi outside the estate gates.
The taxi dropped her off at Pier Nine—a desolate, rusted stretch of the Monongahela riverfront surrounded by abandoned shipping crates and rotting wooden piers.
Rosie pushed open the rusted metal door of Warehouse 14, her crutch echoing loudly against the damp concrete floor.
"Aunt Martha?" she called out, her voice echoing in the cavernous space.
The heavy steel door slammed shut behind her, the lock clicking into place.
Out from behind a stack of rusted steel drums stepped Julian Moretti, flanked by four armed mercenaries holding submachine guns.
"Looking for your sweet old aunt, sweetheart?" Julian mocked, stepping forward with a cruel smile. "She’s perfectly fine at home. You, on the other hand, are my ticket to the Monongahela routes."
Rosie’s stomach dropped. She backed away, her crutch gripping the slippery floor. "Dante will kill you for this, Moretti."
"Dante won't know where to look until I’ve sent him your other leg in a box!" Julian snarled, signaling his men. "Grab her!"
Two mercenaries lunged forward.
They expected an easy target—a crippled girl who would collapse and cry.
They were dead wrong.
As the first man reached for her arm, Rosie pivoted on her prosthetic leg with incredible balance, swinging her heavy aluminum crutch with all the force in her broad shoulders.
CRACK!
The solid aluminum tube struck the first man across the side of his jaw, shattering his tooth and knocking him sideways into a stack of wooden pallets.
The second man lunged, grabbing her shoulder. Rosie drove her sharp elbow backward into his nose, causing blood to spurt across his jacket.
"You crazy bitch!" Julian yelled, pulling a nickel-plated pistol from his coat.
Before the remaining guards could overwhelm her, a sound like thunder shattered the warehouse walls.
BOOM!
The heavy steel loading bay doors were blasted inward as a heavy black armored SUV crashed through the metal framework, showering the warehouse with glass and twisted iron.
The driver’s side door slammed open.
Dante Valerio stepped out into the smoke.
He carried a heavy tactical shotgun in his hands, his face a terrifying mask of absolute, godlike wrath. Behind him, Tomas and a dozen Valerio soldiers flooded the warehouse with red laser sights cutting through the darkness.
"Dante!" Rosie cried out.
May you like
Dante’s dark eyes found her instantly. When he saw her standing tall among two downed guards, holding her crutch like a war club, a cold, lethal pride flashed in his eyes.
"Julian," Dante roared over the idling engine. "You made your last mistake!"
