Chapter 7 - The Ambush at the Docks
The sound of Nico’s scream through the satellite phone was something inhuman—a primeval roar of a father whose world was being butchered while he was trapped in traffic.
Two miles away, Nico’s armored SUV blew through a red light at eighty miles per hour, smashing clean through a police barricade on 42nd Street. Glass and plastic showered the asphalt as Marcus, Nico’s remaining loyal driver, fought the steering wheel to keep the heavy vehicle from rolling over.
In the passenger seat, Nico racked the slide of an assault rifle, his eyes wild, blood vessels burst in the whites of his eyes.
Back in Queens, Don Sal Moretti had never left the meatpacking plant alive. The moment Moretti had revealed the ambush on the penthouse, Nico had pulled a concealed blade from his wrist sheath and driven it straight through the older Don’s throat, pinning him to the wooden table before the other capos could even reach for their weapons. Nico had carved his way out of the facility like an angel of death, his sheer savagery freezing the remaining Dons in terror.
""Faster, Marcus!"" Nico bellowed, kicking the dashboard. ""Hit the sidewalk if you have to! Move!""
Ahead of them, the towering glass facade of the Park Avenue building came into view. Smoke was billowing from the upper terraces, black and oily against the afternoon sky. Two black mercenary vans were parked haphazardly across the entrance, their hazard lights blinking.
Marcus didn't touch the brakes.
The heavy Maybach slammed into the side of the first mercenary van at fifty miles per hour. The sound of tearing metal and shattering glass was deafening. The impact spun the van sideways, crushing the engine block and clearing a direct path into the building’s circular driveway.
Before the Maybach had even come to a complete stop, Nico kicked his door open and hit the pavement rolling.
He didn't wait for backup. He didn't check his corners like a tactician. He charged through the shattered glass doors of the lobby like a force of nature.
Two Russian gunmen stationed by the security desk raised their weapons, but Nico fired on the move, two double-taps dropping them instantly behind the marble counter. He bounded up the emergency stairwell three steps at a time, ignoring the searing burn in his lungs, his entire consciousness locked onto the faint, rhythmic crying he swore he could hear echoing through the concrete core of the skyscraper.
Elena. Elena. Elena.
Every flight of stairs was a battleground. He took out a gunman on the twelfth floor with a point-blank blast, wrestled a second man over the railing on the fourteenth, sending him plummeting into the dark stairwell below, and kicked open the penthouse fire door on the twenty-second floor.
The penthouse was a war zone. Smoke hung thick and choking in the air.
Nico stepped through the shattered mahogany doors of his study.
The thermal lance had done its work. The heavy steel door of the panic room hung crooked on its hinges, melted metal dripping like wax onto the scorched Persian rug. Leo’s lifeless body lay near the entrance, surrounded by brass shell casings.
Inside the vault stood the scarred mercenary leader. He had his sidearm drawn, aimed at the far corner of the room.
Nico didn't shout a warning.
He dropped his empty rifle, closed the distance in two monstrous strides, and drove his combat knife straight upward through the mercenary’s jawbone into his brain. The man collapsed instantly, dead before he touched the floor.
Nico turned, his chest heaving, his weapon falling from his numb fingers.
In the corner of the scorched steel room, huddled on a pile of wool emergency blankets, sat Elena.
Her face was drenched in sweat, her dark hair plastered to her cheeks, her lips bitten raw from holding back her screams. Wrapped tightly in Nico’s own dark cashmere suit jacket, resting against her bare, trembling chest, was a tiny, squirming, blood-streaked infant.
A faint, indignant wail echoed off the cold steel walls.
Nico fell to his knees in the blood and ashes.
""Elena,"" he choked out, completely breaking. The monster of New York buried his face into the blankets, sobbing violently against her trembling knees. ""You're alive. You're alive.""
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Elena reached down with one exhausted, shaking hand and touched his blood-streaked hair.
""Meet your daughter, Nico,"" she whispered, her voice cracked and faint. ""Meet Sofia.""
