Chapter 6 - The Breach at the Riverfront
Midnight draped the Delaware River in an impenetrable shroud of fog and freezing drizzle. At the end of an abandoned industrial pier stood the Black Anchor Club, a heavily fortified warehouse that Vincent Marcone used as his personal fortress and money-laundering hub.
Inside, cigar smoke hung thick beneath the rafters. Vincent Marcone, a bloated, graying man in a bespoke velvet blazer, was toasting with his top capos over glasses of vintage scotch.
"To the docks," Vincent sneered, raising his crystal tumbler. "Lorenzo Moretti has grown soft. He hides in his mansion with his dead sister's memories. By the new year, we squeeze him out of the harbor completely."
Before his men could echo the toast, the warehouse's reinforced metal bay doors were violently blown off their hinges with a concussive blast of C4.
The explosion sent men sprawling across shattered glass and splintered tables. Alarms wailed into the night as black-clad figures swarmed through the smoke with clinical, terrifying precision. Gabriel led the suppression fire, disarming guards before they could even draw their weapons.
Through the clearing haze of cordite, Lorenzo Moretti strode into the center of the room. He wore no tactical mask. He held his firearm at his side, walking with the calm, terrifying certainty of the grim reaper.
Vincent scrambled behind an overturned oak bar, his hands trembling as he struggled to pull a snub-nosed revolver from his waistband. "Moretti! You're insane! You violate the commission rules, every family on the East Coast will hunt you down!"
"There are no rules tonight, Vincent," Lorenzo’s voice echoed off the concrete walls, cold enough to freeze bone marrow. "The commission cannot save a dead man."
Lorenzo moved with breathtaking lethality. When two of Marcone's bodyguards lunged forward, Lorenzo dropped them with two rapid, perfectly placed shots to the center mass. He vaulted over the bar, grabbed Vincent by the throat with his bare left hand, and hoisted the heavy man into the air before slamming him onto the shattered remnants of the table.
Vincent wheezed, clawing at Lorenzo’s iron grip. "What... what do you want? Territory? Take the docks! Take everything!"
Lorenzo leaned down until his eyes were inches from Vincent’s terrified face. "Do you remember Route 76, Vincent? Do you remember the pregnant woman you ran off the road into a burning ditch?"
Vincent’s bloodshot eyes widened with pure, unadulterated horror. "Elena... that was three years ago... it was business—"
"And do you remember Ethan Bennett?" Lorenzo pressed, his voice dropping to a demonic whisper. "The electrician whose safety cable you ordered cut because you feared he saved a child?"
"No... no, please—"
"Elena died saving her baby," Lorenzo said, pressing the cold barrel of his Kimber directly against Vincent’s forehead. "And that baby is safe with me. Her name is Lily. And she will grow up in a city where your name is nothing but ashes."
May you like
A single muffled gunshot echoed through the warehouse, swallowed by the roar of the river wind.
Within an hour, every asset, ledger, and stronghold belonging to the Marcone syndicate across the tri-state area was seized or neutralized. The reign of terror that had haunted Clare Bennett for three long years had been completely, irreversibly erased from the earth.
