Chapter 9 - Blood at the Altar of Vengeance
“Dom...” Paulie’s voice was a high, thin squeak that scraped against the ringing silence of the salon. His face went the color of curdled milk. “Dom, listen to me... you don't understand the play here—”
Dominic lowered his rifle, letting it hang from its tactical sling. He walked toward Paulie with a slow, measured, terrifying gait. Every step Dominic took was the sound of a countdown reaching zero.
“Where is she, Paulie?” Dominic asked. His voice was barely above a whisper, but it carried an apocalyptic chill that made Paulie stagger backward until his spine slammed into the mahogany doorframe.
“Don Lucian has her in the observation lounge!” Paulie stammered, raising his hands in frantic surrender, sweat pouring down his temples. “She’s safe! I swear on my mother’s soul, Dom, she hasn't been touched! It was business! Lucian was going to squeeze you out of the docks anyway! He offered me forty percent of the northern territory! I had to take it!”
“You put a three-year-old child in a cage,” Sadi said, stepping out from behind Dominic, her Beretta pointed directly at Paulie’s face.
Paulie’s eyes bulged as he recognized her. His knees visibly buckled. “Sadi? No... no, you died at the bridge... I saw the wreckage...”
“You saw what I wanted you to see, you rat,” Sadi snarled, her finger tightening on the trigger.
“Wait,” Dominic said softly, raising a single hand.
Sadi paused, glaring at him. “Dominic, he tried to kill us!”
“I know,” Dominic said. He stopped six inches from Paulie. The betrayal of ten years, the three years of mourning an empty grave, the grief, the blood—all of it condensed into a terrifying, dead calm behind Dominic’s gray eyes.
“You carried my father,” Dominic murmured. “You stood beside me at my wedding. You drank my wine. You took an oath.”
“Dom, please—” Paulie sobbed, tears cutting through the grease on his face. “We were brothers!”
Dominic drew a serrated combat knife from his chest rig in a blur of motion. Before Paulie could scream, Dominic drove the six-inch steel blade down through the center of Paulie’s right hand, pinning it completely to the solid mahogany doorframe behind him.
Paulie’s shriek of agony was swallowed by the storm outside. He writhed, pinned like an insect against the wood, blood gushing over his designer cuffs.
“Brothers don't touch children,” Dominic whispered into Paulie’s ear.
Dominic didn't pull the blade out. He left Paulie pinned to the wall, turned around, and kicked open the double doors leading into the upper observation lounge.
The observation lounge was a sweeping, circular room encased in floor-to-ceiling panoramic glass, offering a view of the raging ocean outside.
Standing in the center of the room was Don Lucian—an aging, silver-haired patrician in a tailored cashmere coat. Behind him stood two massive Chechen bodyguards armed with automatic shotguns.
And sitting on a plush leather sofa in the corner, clutching a small, worn plush rabbit with one ear missing, was a little girl.
She wore a pink fleece sweater that was too big for her. She had huge, terrified obsidian eyes, a tiny stubborn chin, and dark curls plastered to her forehead with sweat.
The moment Sadi saw her, every shred of tactical discipline evaporated. “MIA!”
The two Chechen bodyguards raised their weapons to fire.
Dominic didn't think. He didn't take cover. He threw himself forward, raising his M4 and emptying the entire remainder of the magazine in one continuous, deafening roar.
The high-caliber rounds shredded the first bodyguard, driving him backward through the heavy plate-glass window. The glass shattered outward into the storm, letting a howling gale of rain and freezing wind roar into the luxury cabin. The second bodyguard fired his shotgun; the blast caught Dominic across his left shoulder, tearing through the Kevlar vest and ripping a searing line of fire across his flesh.
Dominic stumbled, hit one knee, discarded the empty rifle, and drew his Colt .45 with his uninjured right hand.
*BANG. BANG.*
Two rounds took the second bodyguard through the chest, dropping him like a felled redwood.
Don Lucian backed toward the shattered window frame, the wind whipping his silver hair across his face, his hand reaching inside his cashmere coat for a small silver derringer.
“Russo!” Lucian screamed over the howling storm. “You’re finished! Even if you kill me, the Commission will hunt you down! You broke the treaty!”
Dominic rose to his feet. Blood was dripping down his left arm, soaking his white dress shirt, pooling in his fingers. He walked past the dead bodyguards, stepping over the shattered glass crunching beneath his boots.
He looked at the little girl on the sofa. Mia was staring at him, her huge dark eyes wide with shock, not crying, just watching this bleeding giant who moved like an unstoppable storm.
Dominic turned his gaze back to Don Lucian.
“The Commission isn't here tonight, Lucian,” Dominic said, his voice cutting through the roar of the ocean wind. “Only a father.”
Dominic fired once.
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The bullet caught Don Lucian between his eyes. The old mobster’s head snapped back, and his body tumbled backward through the shattered frame, vanishing forever into the foaming, three-hundred-foot black depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
***
