Chapter 7 - A Wolf at the Dinner Table
The reinforced blast doors of the east service entrance buckled inward with a deafening, concussive roar.
Concrete dust and cordite smoke filled the vaulted stone corridor of the wine cellar. Through the blinding haze, six heavily armored Moretti enforcers surged forward, their tactical shotguns and suppressed submachine guns spitting continuous streams of lead into the darkness.
Dominic didn't duck. He stepped behind a heavy limestone pillar, brought his customized Colt M4 carbine to his shoulder, and fired with surgical, devastating precision.
Three shots. Three center-mass hits. The lead Moretti operator collapsed backward, his body armor shredded by the high-velocity armor-piercing rounds.
Beside him, Lev’s men opened fire, creating a crossfire of overlapping suppression down the narrow stone corridor. Shell casings clattered against the flagstones in a relentless, rhythmic downpour. The subterranean space became a deafening vortex of muzzle flashes, screaming ricochets, and the guttural shrieks of dying men.
Behind the secondary barricade of oak wine casks, Luca and Marco Bellandi were firing blindly into the smoke. Marco was screaming hysterically with every pull of the trigger, emptying his magazine into the dust before dropping behind a barrel to reload with shaking hands.
“Push to the tunnel!” Dominic shouted to Lev above the roar of combat. “Hold the river entrance until Kathryn signals three green flares!”
Lev nodded, directing four of his men to fall back toward the heavy iron bulkhead that sealed the entrance to the underground passage leading to the river.
Dominic advanced toward the breach. He moved through the smoke like a wraith, his eyes tracking movement through the strobing flashes of gunfire. Another Moretti soldier rounded the corner of the wine vault; Dominic fired twice, dropping him instantly, then grabbed the man’s tactical vest, dragging the corpse forward to use as a mobile shield as a hail of buckshot shredded the plaster above his head.
Then, from the darkness of the breached service stairs, a deep, raspy voice echoed through the chamber.
“Dominic Rainer!”
The gunfire stuttered, then ceased. The silence that rushed in was thick with the smell of burned powder, pulverized limestone, and metallic blood.
Standing at the base of the shattered stairs was a mountain of a man dressed in a charcoal tactical trench coat, holding a heavy chrome Desert Eagle at his side. Salvatore Moretti—the eldest son of the Detroit boss, a ruthless warlord who had spent the last five years turning the Midwest into his personal slaughterhouse.
Behind Sal stood eight fresh shooters, their weapons trained on the limestone pillars.
“Sal,” Dominic said calmly from behind his cover, not lowering his rifle by an inch. “You drove seven hundred miles to die in a basement. You should have stayed in Michigan.”
Sal laughed, a deep, rumbling sound that carried no humor. “I came to collect on an investment, Rainer! Three million to the Bellandi boys to set you up, and another two to clear the table! You think this was about territory? This was about the port of Newark! Your underboss sold you out six months ago, Dom! He told us you went soft the day you put a ring on that baker girl’s finger!”
Dominic’s jaw set like granite. He glanced sideways toward the wine barrels.
Marco Bellandi was cowering behind a six-hundred-gallon oak cask, his hands over his ears, sobbing uncontrollably. But Luca... Luca was standing slowly, clutching his pinned hand against his ribs, staring at Sal Moretti with a look of frantic, desperate desperation.
“Sal!” Luca croaked through his broken jaw. “Sal, it’s me! It’s Luca! We had an agreement! The contract said if Dominic went down, the Newark docks belonged to the Bellandi family!”
Sal Moretti slowly turned his chrome pistol toward Luca. His expression was one of cold, absolute disgust.
“The contract said if Dominic went down *in November*, you piece of shit,” Sal said casually. “You couldn't even run over a woman properly. You let her take the bumper, you let Dominic live, and then you hid like a rat for six months while she drained your balls in private clinics.”
Luca froze, his eyes widening in pure horror. “Sal—no—we can still—!”
Sal pulled the trigger.
The heavy .50-caliber round took Luca Bellandi square in the chest, throwing his body backward into the oak casks. The wood shattered under the impact, five hundred gallons of dark red vintage Cabernet bursting forward like a tidal wave of blood, washing over the stone floor and pooling around Marco’s trembling knees.
“Traitorous dogs never get paid, Luca,” Sal muttered, spitting onto the wet flagstones.
Marco let out a strangled, animal scream as his brother’s lifeless body rolled into the red flood. He scrambled backward on his hands and knees, clutching his weapon, completely unhinged by the horror.
“Now, Dominic!” Sal shouted, raising his weapon toward the central pillars. “Let’s finish this like men!”
Dominic didn't answer with words.
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He reached into his tactical vest, pulled the pin on a flash-bang canister with his teeth, and banked it off the stone ceiling directly into the center of the Moretti strike squad.
***
