Chapter 35 - The Mother’s Vengeance
Vincent staggered backward into the snow, spitting crimson, his vision swimming with white flares.
Domenico stood before him, his cashmere overcoat spattered with ice, his face twisted in a sneer of pure contempt. Flanking him were his two personal bodyguards—monolithic veterans from the old Palermo street wars, their submachine guns leveled at Caterina.
"Did you really believe you could outmaneuver the man who wrote the playbook, Vincent?" Domenico said, raising his cane to strike again.
Before the cane could fall, an ear-splitting crack split the air.
One of the Sicilian bodyguards gasped, his weapon falling into the drift as a heavy rifle bullet tore through his shoulder.
Fifty yards away, on the roof of a derelict fishing shack, stood Caterina’s contingency. A red laser dot painted the center of Domenico’s forehead.
Domenico froze.
"Did you think Vincent was the only one who prepared for this trip, old man?" Caterina’s voice was as cold as the Arctic wind as she stepped down from the helicopter struts, holding a satellite detonator in her left hand and her sidearm in her right. "You spent forty years underestimating the women in this family. You killed Vincent's mother because she saw what you were. But I am not an innocent girl from Queens."
Caterina whistled sharply.
From the darkness of the fjord, the low, mechanical rumble of twin diesel engines vibrated through the ice shelf. Breaking through the surface crust two hundred yards out was an unflagged, tactical offshore interceptor vessel—the private black-ops craft Caterina had contracted through her family's old contacts in Marseille.
"You're surrounded, Don Falcone," Caterina said, stepping closer until the muzzle of her Beretta was pressed against Domenico’s temple. "Your pilots are dead. Your strike team is trapped in a burning Soviet bunker. And the global network you spent half a century building is currently being uploaded to Interpol by my associates in Lyon."
Domenico let out a dry, rattling laugh. "You bluff, woman. The ledger requires both keys. The comb and the cane."
Ruby stepped out from the shadow of the helicopter, holding the silver comb. "No, Grandfather. It didn't need the cane."
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Domenico’s eyes widened.
"The cane was just a power supply," Ruby said, her voice chillingly devoid of emotion. "The memory drive was inside the swallow the whole time. Dad gave me his laptop before we jumped off the ship. It's already done. You don't have an empire anymore. You're just an old man with an expensive stick."
