Chapter 14 - The Greenhouse Trap
Before Moretti’s men could squeeze their triggers, the floor beneath their boots gave way with a sickening crack.
They didn't fall into the cellar; they fell into the trap I had secretly engineered beneath the mansion’s foundation six months ago—an automated counter-intrusion pit connected directly to the estate's drainage tunnels. Heavy steel grates snapped shut overhead, trapping the enforcers in a concrete cage fifty feet below the floorboards.
“Is that all you brought, Moretti?!” I yelled toward the shattered doorway, stepping over the broken glass of the foyer.
From the dense fog rolling in off the Long Island Sound, a single figure emerged, walking slowly up the front steps through the smoke.
He wasn't young. He didn't wear a tactical vest or carry a modern assault rifle.
Vincente Moretti the Elder wore a tailored charcoal wool overcoat, a silver-handled cane tapping against the stone steps with measured, arrogant precision. His face was weathered like old leather, his eyes cold and dead behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.
“You always were arrogant, Dominic,” Vincente said, stopping at the threshold, leaning heavily on his cane as he surveyed the shattered foyer and my bleeding enforcer on the rug. “You thought because you traded yourTommy gun for a corporate portfolio, the blood on your hands would wash off in the rain.”
“You’re out of your jurisdiction, old man,” I said, keeping my MP5 locked squarely on his chest. “And your brother is already food for the crabs at the bottom of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”
Vincente let out a dry, rattling laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping across concrete. “Salvatore was a fool who let ambition cloud his judgment. He thought the syndicate was about territory. But the syndicate, Dominic... the syndicate is about blood.”
Vincente raised his cane slightly, tapping the silver handle twice against the porch floor.
From the treeline surrounding the estate, the red laser dots of a dozen sniper rifles suddenly painted the front of the mansion, locking onto every window, every door, and every exterior wall.
“You have fifty men out there,” I said, my voice dangerously steady. “You have a bomb strapped to my best man. But you’re standing right here in front of me. Why?”
Vincente smiled, revealing yellowed, uneven teeth. “Because I didn't come here to kill you, Dominic. Dying is too easy for a man like you. I came to give you a choice.”
He reached into his overcoat and pulled out a heavy, old-fashioned silver pocket watch, snapping the lid open with a crisp click.
“In exactly ten minutes, the entire perimeter of this estate—every acre of land, every room in this house, and every concrete vault where you hid your daughters—will be leveled by five hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate planted beneath the foundation by your own corrupt security contractors.”
May you like
My grip on the MP5 tightened until my knuckles turned white. “You rigged the foundation.”
“I rigged everything,” Vincente said smoothly. “Unless... you sign over every corporate holding, every shipping lane, and every square foot of real estate back to the Moretti Council, and walk out of this house alone, leaving your daughters and that federal bitch behind to inherit the ashes.”
