Chapter 22 - The Lion's Wake
The smell of cordite and burning hydraulic fluid choked the air inside the shattered salon of the *Maresia*.
Dante Moretti knelt behind an overturned mahogany dining table, an automatic combat shotgun resting against his thigh, his custom black tailored suit torn at the shoulder and slick with crimson. Blood trickled down his temple, stinging his left eye, but his steady, lethal gaze never wavered from the bullet-riddled corridor leading to the lower decks.
In the reinforced vault beneath the salon floor, wrapped in a tactical vest lined with Kevlar, baby Leo sat upright in a makeshift crib, clutching a tarnished silver pendant between his tiny fingers. Every time an explosion rocked the hull, the child’s eyes welled, but he did not scream. He had been taught silence since the night the shadows first came for him.
"Don Dante!" Marco, his scarred capo, stumbled backward into the salon, firing a burst from his submachine gun before slamming the hydraulic bulkhead door shut. "The outer perimeter is gone. They aren't local cartels. They move like elite mercenaries—Vance's private contractors. They have thermite breaching charges on the engine bay. We have ten minutes before they flood the lower decks."
Dante racked the slide of his shotgun, the metallic clatter echoing with absolute finality. "They want the biometric encryption key around Leo’s neck. If they get through that door, you shoot the console, flood the corridor, and detonate the scuttling charges. Nobody touches my son. Not while my heart is beating."
"Understood, Boss."
Through the cracked panoramic windows of the yacht, the red tracer fire from the encircling gunboats lit up the pitch-black ocean like venomous fireflies. Heavy 50-caliber rounds chewed into the yacht’s reinforced fiberglass superstructure, raining shattered crystal and splintered teak onto the blood-spattered floor.
Dante pulled a radio from his vest, his thumb pressing the transmit button. He stared down into the vault opening where Leo looked up at him with wide, solemn hazel eyes. "If this is where it ends," Dante murmured under his breath, "I pray you find her, Leo. The only woman who ever saw through the blood on my hands."
Suddenly, the roar of gunboat fire ceased.
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A low, resonant vibration began to hum through the salt spray, rattling the yacht’s remaining windows. It wasn't the high-pitched whine of outboard motors. It was the heavy, bone-crushing downwash of two MH-60M Black Hawk stealth helicopters dropping out of the clouds, completely blacked out, their rotors tearing the ocean into a frenzy of white foam.
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