Chapter 7 - Whispers on the Docks
The Delaware River was black, sluggish, and choked with chunks of grey river ice that ground against the wooden pilings of Pier 42.
A bitter wind howled off the water, whistling through the rusted corrugated siding of an abandoned maritime warehouse that had once belonged to the Reading Railroad. Inside, the cavernous space was lit by two yellow halogen work lights hung from the steel rafters.
In the center of the concrete floor sat Eric Dalton.
He was tied to a heavy steel folding chair, his wrists bound behind his back with industrial zip-ties. His face was swollen, his left eye bruised shut, and his split lip was crusted with dried dark blood.
Standing ten feet away was Dominic Moretti.
At sixty-two, Moretti was the undisputed patriarch of North Philadelphia’s drug and gambling rackets. He was a squat, broad-chested man with thinning grey hair, wearing a fur-collared leather coat and smoking a hand-rolled cigar. Around him stood four of his top enforcers, all carrying suppressed automatic pistols beneath their jackets.
“You’re telling me,” Moretti said, his voice a harsh, gravelly rasp through the cigar smoke, “that you walked out on her two weeks ago over eighteen hundred bucks?”
Eric whimpered, spitting blood onto the concrete between his boots. “I didn't know who she was, Mr. Moretti! I swear to God! She worked nights! She smelled like ammonia and lemon polish! She lived on canned soup! How was I supposed to know she was Caruso’s kid?”
Moretti took the cigar from his mouth and chuckled—a dry, rattling sound that held no humor.
“Vincent Caruso’s blood,” Moretti mused, looking up at the steel rafters. “For thirty years, we thought the Caruso line was dead. Teresa never had children. Vincent never married. The whole damn empire was set to fracture the day Vincent took a bullet. And now… out of nowhere, an heir drops out of the sky. A daughter. And a granddaughter.”
Moretti stepped closer to Eric, tapping the glowing ash of his cigar an inch from the young man’s swollen nose.
“Do you know what that means for us, Eric?”
“No… please, just let me go…” Eric sobbed. “I won't say a word to anyone. I’ll leave the state. I’ll take a bus to Florida!”
“It means,” Moretti whispered, “that Vincent Caruso is finally human. For twenty-five years, that bastard had no soft tissue. You couldn't threaten his wife, because he didn't have one. You couldn't threaten his kids, because they didn't exist. He was made of stone and iron. If you crossed him, he burned your business and salted the earth, and there was nothing you could hold over his head to stop him.”
Moretti smiled, his yellowed teeth glinting in the halogen glare.
“Now he has a daughter who cleans toilets. And a premature infant in an incubator.”
Moretti turned to Dino, who was leaning against a stack of wooden pallets. “Is the transport ready?”
“Downstairs in the bay,” Dino replied. “Two unmarked vans with diplomatic plates from the consulate. If we pull this off, Caruso won't even know which state they’re in before he signs over the riverfront leases.”
“Wait… what are you doing?” Eric cried, struggling violently against the zip-ties, the plastic cutting deep into his wrists. “You’re going after Grace? In the hospital? Caruso has an army there! You saw the news!”
Moretti looked down at Eric with cold contempt.
“Caruso has an army at Hawthorne,” Moretti said. “Because he thinks like an old king. He thinks an attack comes through the front gate with horns blowing.”
Moretti leaned down, whispering into Eric’s ear:
“Hawthorne Medical gets its oxygen, surgical narcotics, and sterile linen delivered every morning at five-fifteen through the basement service intake on 8th Street. The contractor for that delivery is Southwark Logistics. Do you know who owns Southwark Logistics, Eric?”
Eric stared at him, terror paralyzing his vocal cords.
“I do,” Moretti said softly. “Vincent thinks his granddaughter is sleeping behind bulletproof glass. By sunrise tomorrow, that baby is going to be sleeping in my basement in Cherry Hill. And Vincent Caruso is going to sign over every dock from here to Wilmington if he ever wants to see her open her eyes again.”
Moretti straightened up and waved a dismissive hand toward the enforcers.
“Throw him in the trunk of the second car,” Moretti ordered, pointing at Eric. “He’s the biological father. If we need to sign emergency medical paperwork or run a legal guardianship claim through a crooked judge in Jersey to muddy the waters, he’s our signature.”
“No! No! Please!” Eric screamed as two heavy men hauled him up by his elbows, his boots dragging through the dirt. “Grace! I’m sorry! Grace!”
May you like
A heavy burlap sack was shoved over his head, cutting off his screams as the heavy steel doors of the warehouse slammed shut.
***
