Chapter 5 - The Siege of Red HookThe Red Hook shipping yards looked like a ghost town swallowed by a maritime fog. Massive shipping cranes loomed like giant iron skeletons against the bruised night sky, while rows of stacked steel containers formed a labyrinth of shadows.
Inside Warehouse 4—the primary distribution hub for the Valente syndicate—twelve armed enforcers stood in a tight defensive perimeter, their automatic weapons raised, sweeping the dark corners for any sign of intrusion.
Corbin Valente strode through the center of the warehouse, his trench coat billowing slightly behind him like the wings of a vulture. His face was a mask of calculated fury. Behind him, Marcus and Sal flanked his sides, their fingers twitching near their holsters.
"Sweep every aisle!" Corbin barked, his voice echoing off the corrugated metal walls. "If they're here, they don't leave breathing!"
"Looking for us, Corbin?"
The voice echoed from the upper gantry walkway, high above the stacked containers.
Corbin whipped his head up. Standing on the metal catwalk, bathed in the amber glow of a halogen security light, were Paxton and Lena.
Paxton stood casually with his hands in his pockets, but it was the creature standing beside them that made the enforcers collectively take a step back. Nero. The hundred-and-fifty-pound mastiff stood tall, his muscles bunched, his yellow eyes locked directly onto Corbin with a predatory focus that made the hair on the back of every hardened killer's neck stand up.
"You little traitorous rat," Corbin snarled, pulling his pistol and aiming it squarely at Paxton's chest. "You think bringing a homeless whore and a feral dog to an execution ground makes you a boss?"
Lena stepped forward, her boots echoing sharply against the metal grating of the catwalk. She didn't look scared. She looked like a judge stepping onto a scaffold.
"He's not the boss, Corbin," Lena said, her voice cutting cleanly through the damp air. "I am."
"You died in that fire ten years ago!" Corbin roared, his finger tightening on the trigger. "You're nothing! A beggar rotting in the gutter!"
"I survived because my father knew men like you would eventually crawl out of the woodwork to steal what wasn't yours," Lena replied coldly. She reached down and unclipped the heavy steel chain from Nero’s collar.
"Kill them!" Corbin shrieked to his men. "Shoot them all!"
Before a single enforcer could squeeze a trigger, Lena raised two fingers to her lips and gave a sharp, piercing whistle—the exact frequency used to command alpha hounds in the deep mountain training camps of the old country.
May you like
Nero didn't hesitate.
With a roar that shook the very foundations of the warehouse, the massive mastiff vaulted off the ten-foot-high catwalk, hurling his colossal weight directly down into the center of Corbin's enforcers like a falling boulder of fur, muscle, and absolute vengeance.
