Chapter 9 - The Final Strike
The Brooklyn Navy Yard was enveloped in a shroud of freezing harbor fog when Dante Moretti’s war council descended upon Pier 42.
Falcone had gathered forty loyal gunmen inside an abandoned naval repair depot, fortifying the iron doors with heavy freight containers. He believed he could hold out until a federal judge he had bribed could secure him safe passage to a private airstrip in South Carolina.
He was wrong.
Dante didn't send negotiators. He didn't offer terms of surrender.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, two heavy construction cranes owned by Moretti Maritime slammed massive shipping containers through the depot’s southern corrugated walls, ripping the building open like a tin can.
Before the dust could settle, twenty flashbang grenades were launched into the cavernous interior, followed by three squads of Moretti enforcers armed with tactical shotguns and suppressed rifles. The firefight was brutal, deafening, and over in less than eight minutes. Falcone’s mercenaries, disoriented and vastly outmaneuvered, threw down their weapons and surrendered in droves.
Falcone was dragged out of a back office by his collar, bleeding from a shrapnel cut on his cheek, his expensive coat covered in drywall dust. Marco threw him onto the wet concrete of the pier, where Dante was waiting.
Dante stood alone at the edge of the dock, listening to the gentle lapping of the dark river water against the pilings. He turned around slowly, his long black overcoat billowing in the harbor wind.
""Dante! Listen to me!"" Falcone begged, crawling backward on his hands and knees, his bravado completely shattered. ""It was business! The families can’t survive with a split leadership! We can make a deal! I’ll give you Miami! I’ll hand over the Caribbean routes! Millions, Dante! Just let me take a boat out of the harbor!""
Dante stepped forward, towering over the groveling boss. He reached into his coat pocket. Falcone flinched, bracing for the muzzle of a gun.
Instead, Dante tossed a small, shiny object onto the concrete between Falcone’s knees.
It was the heavy gold Commission coin that Leo had kicked across the floor of the estate.
""My son told me what you are, Lorenzo,"" Dante said quietly.
""What?"" Falcone sputtered, staring at the coin. ""Your mute boy didn't say a word!""
""He spoke with his hands,"" Dante said, his voice cold as a winter grave. ""He called you three things: Greedy. A snake. And garbage. And in my house, my son’s word is absolute law.""
Dante turned his back and began walking toward his waiting Maybach.
""Dante! Wait! What are you doing? Who’s going to run the Commission?"" Falcone screamed after him.
Dante opened the rear door of the car, paused, and looked over his shoulder.
May you like
""The Commission is dissolved. There are no five families anymore. There is only the Moretti foundation. And you, Lorenzo, have an appointment with the tide.""
Marco and three guards stepped forward, hauling Falcone toward the edge of the deep, black water. The screams of the fallen boss were swiftly swallowed by the roar of the harbor wind and the unrelenting surge of the Atlantic ocean.
