Chapter 20 - The Final Confrontation At The Abandoned Brooklyn Pier
The midnight fog rolled heavily off the East River, blanketing the rotting wooden timbers of Pier 14 in Brooklyn. The skeletal remains of old crane towers loomed overhead like prehistoric beasts in the pale moonlight.
Alessandro’s black SUVs parked silently in the shadows behind a rusted shipping container. We stepped out onto the damp concrete, the cold night air biting at our skin as we approached the central warehouse.
Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind us, and a figure stepped out from the fog with her hands raised. It was Camilla Russo, looking terrified and shivering in her ruined red designer dress.
"Alessandro! Thank God!" Camilla cried out, stumbling toward us. "Men in tactical gear chased me all the way from Manhattan; they want to kill me!" Alessandro stopped, leveling his cold gaze at the panic-stricken socialite.
"You called the tabloids and traded our lives for a fifty-thousand-dollar headline, Camilla," Alessandro reminded her flatly. Before Camilla could beg for mercy, the heavy metal doors of the warehouse slid open with a screech.
Marcus Vance stepped out onto the loading dock, flanked by four armed operatives holding silenced submachine guns. "Well, well, well," Vance mocked, clapping his hands slowly in the damp night air.
May you like
"The disgraced diplomat's daughter and the arrogant mob boss, united in a pathetic suicide mission." He raised his own service pistol, pointing it directly at my chest across the open concrete space.
"Drop your weapons or the girl dies right here," Vance ordered with an icy, remorseless smile. Alessandro didn't flinch, raising his firearm with absolute, unflinching precision.
