Chapter 9 - The Reckoning
The rain at LaGuardia Airport fell in jagged, violent sheets, whipping across the tarmac like liquid glass.
Inside private Hangar 4, the twin turbofan engines of a Dassault Falcon 900 business jet were already whining, spinning up to full power, casting heat distortions across the wet concrete. Fuel trucks and black luxury sedans surrounded the perimeter.
Inside the heated passenger lounge of the hangar, Marcus Sterling was chewing his fingernails to the quick, staring frantically at his satellite phone.
“Why aren’t they answering?” Marcus screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria. “The strike team should have been at the rendezvous fifteen minutes ago! Vincent, call them again!”
Vincent Vance sat on a leather sofa, field-stripping an automatic pistol with calm, practiced detachment. But beneath his calm exterior, a muscle ticked beneath his eye. The radio silence from Metropolitan General was unnatural. In their line of work, silence never meant victory; silence meant the morgue.
“Calm down, Marcus,” Vincent said coldly. “There were eight top-tier operators on that floor. Even Dante Moretti can’t survive a point-blank ambush in a tight corridor. They probably had to take a secondary route to evade the police net.”
“And what if they failed?” Marcus cried, his face white as paper. “What if Dante is alive? Do you know what he will do to us? He will peel our skin off while we’re breathing!”
“Shut up!” Vincent barked, sliding the magazine into his weapon with a sharp *clack*. “The jet is fueled. The flight plan to Grand Cayman is cleared. If the team doesn't check in within five minutes, we board the plane and run the operation from offshore. We hold the financial leverage. Moretti can’t touch us in international airspace.”
Suddenly, the heavy steel roll-up door of the hangar began to groan.
Marcus jumped three feet in the air. “What is that? Who authorized the door to open?”
The massive corrugated metal shutter rattled upward into the ceiling.
Outside on the tarmac, the three Escalades were nowhere to be seen. Instead, cutting through the driving rain, was a single, obsidian-black Rolls-Royce Phantom. Its headlights were off, its engine nearly silent, rolling into the illuminated hangar like a phantom gliding into a tomb.
The jet engines outside suddenly sputtered and died. The ground crew had vanished. The hangar was completely, terrifyingly quiet.
The rear door of the Rolls-Royce swung open.
Dante Moretti stepped out.
He wasn't wearing his ruined jacket. He wore a crisp, clean white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, exposing the dark, intricate tattoos of the Sicilian brotherhood inked into his skin. His hands were bare. He held no weapon.
Behind him, emerging from the shadows of the open hangar doors, were twenty heavily armed Moretti enforcers, their rifles raised, instantly boxing in the private jet and cutting off every exit.
Marcus Sterling let out a pathetic, strangled whimper and collapsed to his knees, wetting his thousand-dollar trousers.
Vincent Vance stood up slowly, raising his pistol, but before he could acquire a target, three red laser dots centered directly over his forehead and heart. Vincent froze, his finger hovering over the trigger, the cold realization of his absolute doom washing over him.
Dante walked across the hangar floor, his handmade leather shoes clicking against the concrete with the steady, inexorable cadence of a funeral march. He stopped five feet from Vincent.
“Vincent,” Dante said softly, his voice cutting through the damp chill of the hangar. “Your father was a snake. But he was a smart snake. He knew how far to strike before retreating back into the grass.”
Vincent swallowed hard, sweat beading on his upper lip. “Dante… listen to me. It was business. The treaty—”
“You sent killers into an intensive care unit,” Dante interrupted, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on Vincent’s neck stand up. “You tried to take my daughter. You tried to murder the mother of my child in her hospital bed.”
Dante took one step closer. The air in the hangar seemed to vanish.
“There are rules, Vincent,” Dante whispered. “Even in the dark, there are rules. You broke every single one of them.”
“My men control the south ports!” Vincent bluffed desperately, his voice cracking. “If I don't check in by sunrise, my captains will burn your container ships to the waterline! You’ll lose sixty million dollars in cargo!”
Dante smiled. It was a cold, terrifying sight that chilled Vincent to the marrow of his bones.
“Marco already visited your captains twenty minutes ago,” Dante said smoothly. “They chose life. And your shares in the port authority? Signed over to Moretti Holdings at four a.m.”
Vincent’s knees buckled. He dropped his gun. It clattered against the hangar floor, sliding harmlessly to Dante’s feet.
Dante didn’t even look at it. He turned his gaze toward Marcus Sterling, who was sobbing openly on the floor, clutching Dante’s polished shoes.
“Please, Mr. Moretti!” Marcus begged, tears and snot smearing across his face. “Take my company! Take my money! Take the jet! Just spare my son! Julian didn't know! I didn't know!”
Dante looked down at the pathetic billionaire with absolute, unadulterated disgust.
“Your son laid his hands on my daughter,” Dante said. “He dragged her into broken glass. He treated her like trash because he thought she had no one to stand behind her.”
Dante leaned down, his voice a razor blade against Marcus’s ear.
“Tomorrow morning, the Sterling Corporation will file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Your assets will be liquidated. You and your son will pack two suitcases and leave this continent. If I ever see your faces in North America again, I will not send killers, Marcus. I will come myself.”
Marcus nodded frantically, pressing his forehead against the damp concrete. “Yes! Yes! Thank you! God bless you, Mr. Moretti! We’ll leave tonight!”
Dante turned back to Vincent Vance. The mercy he had shown Marcus—if financial annihilation could be called mercy—was nowhere to be found in his eyes now.
“As for you, Vincent…” Dante murmured.
“Dante, please—” Vincent gasped.
Dante turned his back, walking slowly toward the open door of the Rolls-Royce.
“Feed him to the river,” Dante commanded coldly.
Marco stepped forward, raising a suppressed pistol.
POP.
The gunshot was swallowed whole by the roaring thunder of the storm outside.
Dante climbed into the leather interior of the car, closed the door, and looked at his watch.
Five-thirty in the morning. The rain was beginning to ease.
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“Take me back to my daughter,” Dante said.
***
