Chapter 8 - The Trap at the Port
At 11:30 PM, the rain turned into a heavy fog over the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Dominic Falcone sat in the back of his armored Maybach parked inside Pier 3, smoking a Cuban cigar, waiting for the phone call that would confirm my death.
Beside his car stood six heavily armed guards, their eyes scanning the dark, misty warehouse aisles.
Dominic’s phone buzzed. He picked it up immediately. "Isabella?"
"It's done, Uncle," Isabella’s voice came through the speaker, sounding breathless, panicked, and shaking—a performance forced by the cold steel of Marco’s gun pressed against her temple back at the brownstone. "Gianni and the men... there was a struggle. Alessandro's heart gave out, but he managed to shoot Gianni before he died. I need you here now to secure the house before his soldiers realize what happened!"
Dominic let out a long, satisfied exhale of smoke. "Good girl. My sweet niece. You've done your family proud. I'm on my way."
He hung up, tapped his driver on the shoulder, and said, "Let's go to Brooklyn Heights. It's time to claim our new empire."
The Maybach’s engine purred to life. The driver shifted into drive and pressed the accelerator.
The car moved twenty feet before a massive forklift rammed directly into the driver’s side door, lifting the three-ton armored vehicle off its wheels and slamming it onto its side against a row of shipping containers.
The six guards drew their weapons, screaming orders in Italian, but the fog around them suddenly woke up.
Flashing muzzle lights cut through the mist. Pfft-pfft-pfft.
My men, positioned high on the shipping container stacks, eliminated Falcone’s security detail in less than twenty seconds.
The door of the overturned Maybach was ripped open with a crowbar. Marco reached inside, grabbed a bruised, bleeding Dominic Falcone by his silk lapels, and dragged him out onto the wet concrete.
Dominic collapsed onto his knees, coughing up blood, looking around in utter terror at the bodies of his men surrounding him.
The heavy sound of footsteps approached through the fog.
I stepped out of the shadows, wearing a long black overcoat. Beside me walked Max, his massive black frame blending seamlessly into the darkness, his amber eyes reflecting the yellow sodium lights overhead.
Dominic’s eyes widened in sheer, horror-stricken disbelief. "Vitale... No... You're dead... The heart..."
"My heart is stronger than you think, Dominic," I said, standing over him, looking down with cold indifference. "Though I admit, your niece almost had me."
"Alessandro... please!" Falcone begged, crawling backward on his hands and knees until his back hit the cold steel of a shipping container. "It was Isabella's idea! She came to me seven years ago! She wanted revenge for her father! I just provided the resources! Take the piers! Take everything! Just let me leave the city!"
I looked down at the sniveling old man who had tried to murder me in my own home, who had tried to steal my children’s future.
"You spent thirty years playing the puppet master, Falcone," I said softly. "You thought you could send a snake into my bed and watch me die from afar."
I turned to Max.
For seven years, this dog had been a ghost. A silent shadow. A creature that had suffered through training designed to suppress his natural instincts, forced into silence by people who wanted to use him as a trophy.
I looked into Max's amber eyes. "He's all yours, boy."
Max took a slow, deliberate step forward.
And then, for the first time in seven years, the massive Cane Corso broke his silence.
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It wasn't a bark. It was a roar—a terrifying, primal sound of pure, unadulterated canine fury that echoed off the steel shipping containers like a thunderclap, shattering the quiet night.
Dominic Falcone screamed.
