Chapter 4 - The Showdown in the Garage
The underground parking garage beneath St. Catherine was cavernous, smelling of damp concrete, exhaust fumes, and cold autumn rain.
Yellow sodium floodlights buzzed overhead, casting long, distorted shadows across rows of parked ambulances and medical staff vehicles.
I stepped out of the heavy concrete stairwell door into the chilly draft, my hands resting casually inside the pockets of my wool coat.
Fifty feet away, parked across three parking bays near the emergency generator bay, were three black Cadillacs with tinted windows.
Standing in front of the center vehicle was Carlo Moretti, wearing a tailored houndstooth overcoat, smoking a thick Cuban cigar with an arrogant sneer plastered across his face.
Behind him stood eight enforcers in heavy jackets, their hands clearly resting on concealed hardware.
"Nicholas," Carlo called out, his grating voice echoing off the concrete pillars. "I didn't believe the gossip when my man called. The great Nicholas Reign, hiding in a municipal hospital like a frightened old woman."
I stopped twenty paces away, looking at him with the cold, bored detachment of an apex predator watching a stray dog bark behind a fence.
"You're in my city, Carlo," I said, my voice low and level. "And you're standing between me and my family."
Carlo laughed, a harsh, grating sound that bounced around the garage.
"Your family? You mean that pathetic little waitress you abandoned six years ago? Or the bastard kid she dragged out of your penthouse?"
My vision narrowed into a razor-sharp tunnel of pure, murderous intent.
"How do you know about Emily, Carlo?"
Carlo blew a thick plume of gray cigar smoke toward the ceiling.
"Richard has handled the medical records for the northern district clinics for three years, Nicholas. When Emily Murray applied for Medicaid assistance four months ago, Richard flagged her file. We knew she was yours."
He took two steps forward, tapping the ash from his cigar onto the hood of his car.
"We waited until she hit heart failure. We knew sooner or later, you'd come crawling out of your fortress to play the hero."
"Where is the transport authorization for the donor heart, Carlo?" I asked, refusing to raise my voice.
"Sitting on the front seat of my car," Carlo smiled, his eyes glittering with malicious triumph. "Signed by the procurement trustee. And it stays right there until you sign over the commercial container piers in Port Newark and the distribution warehouses in Bayonne."
He stepped closer, his sneer widening into a venomous grin.
"You trade the docks for her life, Nicholas. Or your little girl watches her mommy leave this hospital in a black zipper bag."
The air in the garage dropped twenty degrees.
Carlo thought he had established leverage; he believed he had constructed a cage around me.
He didn't realize that threatening my child had stripped away every civil rule I had ever observed in twenty years of syndicate leadership.
"Dante," I said softly into the lapel of my coat.
Behind Carlo’s Cadillacs, the heavy metal rolling doors of the maintenance bay slammed open with a deafening metallic screech.
Two massive freight trucks reversed into the driveway at forty miles per hour, completely blocking the only exit ramp with a bone-shattering crunch of bumpers.
From behind the concrete support pillars, fourteen operators in black tactical gear stepped into the amber light, their suppressed short-barreled carbines leveled with terrifying discipline at Carlo’s men.
The arrogant smile on Carlo’s face vanished in half a second.
His cigar fell from his trembling lips, sizzling out in a puddle of muddy water on the concrete.
"What is this?" Carlo stammered, stepping back toward his car.
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"You thought you were setting an ambush, Carlo," I said, drawing my Kimber .45 with a single, fluid motion and racking the slide with a crisp, mechanical click.
"You forgot that I don't negotiate with insects who threaten children."
