Chapter 3 - The Broken Treaty
The concussive wave from the kitchen blew the velvet dining drapes inward, raining glass and plaster dust over thirty tables of screaming socialites. Smoke, dense and chemical, rolled out of the service doors like an encroaching tide.
Don Salvatore Vane bolted to his feet, his chair overturning with a hollow clatter. His four bodyguards drew their weapons in unison, their suit jackets falling open to reveal heavy tactical automatics.
"Moretti, you son of a bitch!" Salvatore roared, his hand slapping down on the shattered china and the rolling diamond ring. "Is this your answer to a blood treaty?!"
Dominic didn't draw his gun. He stood tall amidst the stampede of fleeing patrons, the amber light of the chandeliers glinting off his silver watch. His face was pure, unadulterated ice.
"My answer was on that plate, Salvatore," Dominic said, his baritone slicing through the panic. "The treaty is void. The docks remain under Moretti steel."
"You don't walk away from my daughter!" the old man yelled, gesturing to his men. "Put him down!"
Before the lead enforcer could clear his holster, the heavy oak swinging doors of the kitchen burst open.
Marco stumbled out, his dark suit torn, his left shoulder painted in fresh crimson. In his right hand, he clutched a smoking short-barreled shotgun.
"Boss!" Marco shouted over the sirens. "They hit the service tunnel! They weren't after you—they came from the street with flashbangs, straight for the children!"
Dominic’s world fractured.
The political posturing, the docks, the multi-million-dollar empire—none of it existed. All that remained was the image of four six-year-old boys in ivory blazers and the woman who had spent six years hiding them from the rot of his world.
Dominic moved with terrifying speed.
He didn't fire at Salvatore; he stepped inside the guard of the nearest Vane enforcer, driving the heel of his palm upward into the man’s chin with a brutal, sickening crunch of cartilage. He stripped the operative’s Glock before the body hit the floor, spun on his heel, and fired two controlled, double-taps into the shoulders of the remaining guards.
"Touch my family, Salvatore, and I will feed your bones to the harbor," Dominic snarled, tossing the spent casing onto the linen.
He didn't wait for a response. He sprinted through the smoking debris of the dining hall, leaping over shattered tables, his long legs eating the distance to the service corridor.
The kitchen was a war zone. Industrial prep tables were overturned, stainless steel pots scattered across the blood-slicked tile. Two of Dominic’s personal guards lay unconscious near the dishwashing station, their weapons stripped.
At the far end of the corridor, the reinforced iron fire door hung ajar, twisted off its hinges by a hydraulic breaching tool.
Dominic burst through the threshold into the damp, freezing rain of the alleyway.
The storm that had redirected Elena’s ferry was raging now, cold autumn rain lashing horizontally against the red-brick walls. Steam hissed from the grates beneath his polished shoes.
Fifty yards down the alley, near the intersection with Commercial Street, his armored Suburban sat idling, its hazard lights blinking an eerie amber against the wet brick.
Two men in dark utility coats were wrestling a woman against the rear bumper.
It was Elena.
She was fighting like a cornered animal, her cream tweed dress shredded at the shoulder, her manicured nails raking across the face of an operative who was trying to force a zip-tie around her wrists.
"Let them go!" she screamed, her voice cracking against the wind. "Take me! Leave my babies alone!"
Inside the idling vehicle, through the tinted glass, Dominic could see four small faces pressed against the rear window. Leo was pounding his tiny, bruised fists against the ballistic glass, his face twisted in tears as he screamed a word that Dominic couldn't hear over the rain, but could read perfectly from his trembling lips:
Daddy!
A third operative, standing near the driver's side door, raised an assault rifle toward the back of the alley, spotting Dominic’s approach.
Dominic didn't seek cover. He didn't slow his stride.
He raised his weapon, his eyes narrowing into cold slits of pure, homicidal focus. He squeezed the trigger twice, the suppressed pops swallowed by the thunder rolling off the Atlantic.
The rifleman collapsed against the hood of the SUV, his weapon clattering into the gutter.
The operative holding Elena spun around, using her as a human shield, pulling a snub-nosed revolver and pressing the barrel directly against her temple.
"Stay back, Don Moretti!" the man shouted, his voice shaking beneath the rain. "One step closer, and her brains decorate your bumper!"
Dominic stopped twenty paces away. The rain plastered his swept-back hair to his forehead, dripping down the rugged stubble of his jaw. He lowered his gun by an inch, his eyes drifting from the barrel at Elena's head to her hazel eyes.
She wasn't begging for her life. She was looking at him with an agonized, silent plea: Save our sons.
"You're making a mistake," Dominic said softly, his voice cutting through the storm like a razor. "You work for my uncle, don't you?"
The man sneered, his grip tightening on Elena’s collar. "Your uncle understands succession. A don without an heir is weak, but a don whose four bastards are in our custody... that's a don on a leash. Drop the gun, Moretti, or she dies right here."
Dominic looked at the man. Then, slowly, his gaze shifted toward the roofline directly above the operative's head.
A low, mechanical click echoed from the fire escape above.
Before the operative could react, a heavy, iron fire-escape ladder dropped from the third-story brickwork, swinging down like a pendulum.
The heavy iron rung struck the back of the operative's skull with a sickening, concussive thud, throwing him violently forward onto the wet asphalt.
Elena stumbled free, falling to her knees in the rain.
Dominic lunged forward, closing the distance in two strides, kicking the fallen man's weapon into the gutter before hauling Elena up by her waist, lifting her entirely off the ground and crushing her against his chest.
"I have you," Dominic breathed into her wet hair, his massive arms wrapping around her trembling frame. "I've got you."
Elena clutched his lapels, burying her face into his neck, her entire body shaking with sobs. "The boys... Dominic, the boys..."
The driver’s side door of the Suburban popped open.
Stepping out into the rain was not one of Dominic’s soldiers.
It was an elderly man dressed in an immaculate, old-fashioned navy trench coat, leaning heavily on a silver-topped cane. His face was weathered, his white mustache trimmed with military precision, his pale blue eyes cold and ancient.
It was Don Vincent Moretti—Dominic’s uncle, the man who had supposedly sent Elena to her grave six years ago.
The old man looked at Dominic, then at Elena, and finally toward the back window where the four identical boys were staring out in terror.
May you like
A cruel, knowing smile spread across the old man’s wrinkled lips as he tapped his silver cane against the running board of the truck.
"You always had a soft heart for Southie trash, nephew," Vincent said, his voice smooth as silk. "A shame that none of those four boys share a single drop of your blood."
