Chapter 9 - THE WRATH OF THE MORETTIS
The air in room 4B completely evaporated.
“Lily!” Nora shrieked, the sound tearing from her throat like a physical wound.
She shoved past Lorenzo and Dominic, completely ignoring the agonizing pain radiating through her body, and sprinted down the hallway toward the master suite.
Lorenzo was right behind her, his face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
They burst through the heavy double doors of the master suite.
The room was a slaughterhouse.
The two guards Lorenzo had stationed inside lay dead on the floor, their throats cut with terrifying, silent precision. The mercenaries hadn't used guns; they had used the chaos of the downstairs gunfight as a distraction to slip through the broken east wall undetected.
Nora threw herself onto the massive four-poster bed, tearing desperately through the cashmere blankets and pillows.
It was empty.
Lily was gone.
“No, no, no!” Nora sobbed, collapsing onto the mattress, clutching a tiny, empty blue blanket to her chest. “Please God, no!”
Lorenzo stood perfectly still in the center of the ruined bedroom.
He had saved the infant with his own hands. He had watched Nora bleed for that child. He had sworn to protect them both.
And Antonio Russo had stolen her.
“Dominic,” Lorenzo whispered, his voice so quiet, so deadly calm, that it made the hairs on the back of his lieutenant’s neck stand up.
“Boss?”
“Where did they go?”
“The choppers,” Dominic replied, checking his radio. “Two of them fled when the gunfight turned. But thermal imaging shows the third chopper just took off from the south lawn. It’s heading south toward the city.”
Lorenzo looked at the blood on his hands.
“Russo thinks he has leverage,” Lorenzo said softly. “He thinks he can use a three-pound premature baby to force me to surrender the Commission.”
He turned to Nora, who was weeping uncontrollably on the bed.
Lorenzo walked over and placed a large, firm hand on her shaking shoulder.
“Nora, look at me,” he commanded softly.
She looked up, her eyes red and completely shattered.
“I delivered your daughter,” Lorenzo said, his gray eyes locking onto hers with terrifying intensity. “I breathed air into her lungs. She belongs to this family now.”
He turned to Dominic.
“Get the satellite phone. Call Russo directly.”
Dominic nodded, pulling the heavy encrypted phone from his tactical vest. He punched in a series of numbers and handed it to Lorenzo.
The phone rang twice before a smooth, arrogant voice answered.
“Lorenzo,” Antonio Russo chuckled. “I hear you survived my little blizzard party. Congratulations. You always were a hard man to kill.”
“You have something that belongs to me, Antonio,” Lorenzo said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion.
“I have a very small, very loud piece of leverage, yes,” Russo mocked. “I must say, I didn't expect the great Lorenzo Moretti to care so much about a maid’s bastard. But my men tell me you played doctor tonight. How touching.”
“What do you want?”
“I want the docks in Brooklyn, the shipping lanes in Jersey, and I want you to step down as Capo of the Commission,” Russo demanded coldly. “You have three hours to sign the paperwork and broadcast it to the Five Families. If you don't, I toss the baby out of the chopper somewhere over the Hudson.”
Nora let out a muffled sob of sheer terror, burying her face in the pillows.
Lorenzo didn't blink.
“Three hours,” Lorenzo repeated.
“Tick tock, Lorenzo,” Russo laughed, and the line went dead.
Lorenzo handed the phone back to Dominic.
“Boss, what do we do?” Dominic asked nervously. “If we give up the docks and the title, the Moretti family is finished. We’ll be slaughtered within a month.”
“We aren't giving up anything,” Lorenzo said, walking toward his study.
“But he’ll kill the baby!” Nora cried, scrambling off the bed and following him into the hallway.
“Russo isn't going to kill the baby,” Lorenzo promised her, opening a hidden panel behind a massive oil painting in the corridor.
He pulled out a sleek, black laptop and powered it on.
“How do you know?” Nora pleaded.
“Because Russo doesn't realize what he actually stole,” Lorenzo said, a dark, predatory smile touching his lips.
He typed rapidly on the keyboard, bringing up a highly encrypted tracking software program.
A digital map of New York State appeared on the screen.
In the center of the screen, moving rapidly south toward Manhattan, was a small, blinking red dot.
Nora stared at the screen in confusion. “What is that?”
Lorenzo looked at her.
“When my men found you in the basement, they told me your boyfriend Brody was a Viper. They told me he pinned a silver broach to your uniform before he abandoned you.”
Nora touched her collar, realizing for the first time that the broach was gone.
“It was a GPS tracker,” Lorenzo explained. “The Vipers used it to find this estate.”
“But they took the baby,” Nora said, panic rising again. “Not the broach.”
“I know,” Lorenzo said, his smile widening into something truly terrifying. “Because when I bundled Lily in those cashmere blankets after she was born... I took the broach off your uniform, and I pinned it inside the baby’s swaddle.”
He pointed at the blinking red dot on the screen.
“Russo thinks he stole leverage. But he actually stole a homing beacon. And he’s leading us directly to his primary safe house.”
Lorenzo slammed the laptop shut and grabbed his submachine gun.
May you like
He looked at Dominic.
“Get the snowmobiles. We don't need roads. We’re going hunting.”
