Chapter 6 - Blood on the Bay
I burst through the side pantry doors into the freezing salt air, firing two quick shots into the chest of a Moretti soldier crouched behind a rusted lawn tractor.
The man dropped like a sack of wet cement. I snatched his submachine gun, a suppressed MP5, and sprinted toward the dense treeline bordering the bay.
Behind me, the old Vance estate erupted into a symphony of fire and screaming steel. Yuri and Vince were putting up a hell of a fight, but Moretti had brought at least twenty professional contract killers—men imported straight from the ports of Naples who didn't care about collateral damage or police sirens.
“Over there! By the boathouse!” someone shouted in Italian from behind me.
Three flashlights swept across the brush. I dropped low behind a stack of rotting lobster traps, waiting until the heavy boots crunched against the gravel no more than five feet away.
I rolled out from the shadows, sweeping the legs out from under the lead gunman before driving the butt of my MP5 into his skull with enough force to shatter bone. The second man raised his pistol, but before he could squeeze the trigger, a sharp crack split the night air from the ridge above.
The gunman’s head snapped back in a spray of crimson, and he collapsed instantly.
I looked up toward the ridge.
There, silhouetted against the moonlight on the roof of the old boathouse, stood Grace. She was holding a sniper rifle with a thermal scope—an asset her federal team had hidden in the local cache.
“Move, Dominic!” she yelled down through the salt wind. “Moretti’s main reinforcement truck just pulled into your driveway!”
I didn't hesitate. I sprinted toward the private dock where Grace’s unmarked Ford Explorer was hidden beneath a camouflage tarp. I slashed the padlock with a knife, jumped into the driver's seat, and punched the ignition. The engine roared to life with a deep, guttural growl.
I swung the SUV around, cutting through the overgrown hedge line just as Grace dropped from the boathouse roof into the passenger seat, slamming her door shut as a hail of submachine gun rounds peppered the rear quarter panel.
“You’re out of your mind!” Grace yelled over the screaming engine as we tore down the dirt road toward the main highway.
“Takes one to know one!” I yelled back, shifting hard into third gear as we blew past the property gates.
In the rearview mirror, I watched the Vance estate catch fire, the orange flames licking the dark Long Island sky like a dying beast. But my mind wasn't on the burning house or the dead old man inside.
It was on my mansion.
On Olivia, Sophie, and Nora.
Because as we sped down the dark highway, my cell phone—which had been dead for hours due to the signal blockers—suddenly buzzed violently in my pocket.
May you like
It was a text message from an unknown number.
“Nice try, Dominic. But while you were playing hero at the bay, Frank brought your little princesses to me. Come alone to the Brooklyn Navy Yard dock twelve by sunrise, or watch them take their final swim.”
