Chapter 2 - AMBUSH AT TOUCHDOWN"They didn't hijack the plane to crash it. They hijacked it to execute my blood.""Get down!"
I didn't hesitate. I threw my heavy body over Lila and Elena, slamming them onto the floor of the first-class suite as the distinct ptht-ptht of a suppressed firearm hissed through the chaotic cabin.
The bullet tore straight through the leather headrest where Lila’s head had been resting a fraction of a second earlier. Shards of synthetic foam and leather sprayed across my back.
Screams echoed from the economy cabin behind us, but the primary target was right here in seat 4A.
"Luca!" Elena shrieked, clutching Lila beneath my torso.
"Stay under the seats! Don't move!" I barked.
My mind worked at lightning speed. I was unarmed—airport security in JFK was airtight, even for a mob kingpin like Luca Moretti. But an assassin at 30,000 feet meant my private security apparatus had been breached at the highest level. Someone in New York had tracked my last-minute ticket purchase and placed a sleeper hitman on this flight.
The assassin stepped down the aisle, his boots clicking softly on the carpeted floor. He was professional, disciplined, and moving with methodical precision.
"Luca Moretti," a voice mocked through the dark cabin. "The Great Don of Manhattan, cowering on the floor over a bastard child."
"Julian sent you, didn't he?" I said loudly, keeping my voice cool, calculating, and steady as I slid my heavy platinum watch off my wrist and wrapped its thick metal chain tightly around my right fist like improvised brass knuckles.
The hitman chuckled softly. "You always were sharp, Boss. Julian sends his regards. He said it’s time for the old blood to be wiped out so the new syndicate can rise."
Julian. My underboss. The man I had raised from the gutters of Brooklyn. The man I trusted with my life, my books, and my empire. He was the snake who had sent the threat to Elena six years ago. He had engineered her flight so I would remain heirless, vulnerable, and focused on grief while he quietly bit away at my territories.
"You made one mistake," I whispered from beneath the seats.
"Yeah? What's that?" the hitman growled, stepping into the narrow gap beside seat 4A, raising his suppressed gun to point directly down into the dark shadow between the chairs.
"You brought a gun to a fight against a man who has everything to lose."
I lunged upward like a coiled viper.
My left hand grabbed the barrel of his pistol, forcing it upward just as he pulled the trigger. The bullet smashed into the plastic ceiling panel, shattering the light fixtures. Pain flared through my palm as the hot slide pinched my skin, but I ignored it.
With my right fist, weighted down by the thick platinum Rolex, I smashed his jaw with catastrophic force. The metallic crunch echoed through the small cabin.
The hitman stumbled back, blood spurting from his broken nose, but he was a trained professional. He lashed out with a vicious tactical kick to my ribs. I absorbed the blow, grunted, and tackled him around the waist, slamming his head back against the solid metal frame of the galley door.
BANG.
His head cracked against the corner of the aluminum frame. His eyes rolled back, and the weapon clattered to the carpeted floor.
I grabbed the fallen suppressed 9mm, ripped the spare magazine from his vest, and checked the chamber with practiced, lethal efficiency. One movement. Crisp. Dead.
The entire first-class cabin was dead silent now. Elena was hyperventilating on the floor, her body covering Lila, who was crying quietly into her mother’s chest.
I knelt beside them, my tailored suit torn, blood dripping from my bruised knuckles onto the grey carpet. I reached out and gently stroked Lila’s curly hair.
"Hey," I murmured softly. "Look at me, little bird."
Lila peeked out from under Elena's arm, her big hazel eyes wide with horror and awe. She looked at the bloody gun in my hand, then at my face.
"Are you a bad man?" she sobbed, her voice trembling violently.
The question ripped through my chest deeper than any bullet ever could. I stared at my child—the girl I never knew existed, who held my soul in her small hands.
"To the rest of the world? Yes," I said honestly, looking her dead in the eye. "But to you? I am the wall that keeps the monsters away. I promise you, Lila, no one will ever hurt you while I breathe."
Below us, the plane's tires screeched onto the tarmac of San Francisco International Airport. We had landed. But the nightmare was far from over.
Out the oval window, through the heavy rain pouring over the tarmac, I didn't see airport police cruisers with flashing blue lights waiting for an emergency landing.
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Instead, I saw three blacked-out SUVs pulling directly onto the runway, blocking the taxiway, their doors sliding open to reveal men dressed in tactical gear carrying automatic rifles.
Julian hadn't just put one man on the plane. He had sent an entire hit squad to ensure none of us left the West Coast alive.
