Chapter 8
Midnight.
Division Street.
The old warehouse district. Abandoned factories. Empty loading docks. The kind of place where men died and no one found the bodies for weeks.
Tommy’s men had been arriving for an hour.
Cars pulled in one by one. Lights off. Quiet. Men in dark coats got out, nodded to each other, and took positions around the perimeter.
Three hundred of them.
Armed to the teeth.
Tommy had made calls. Word had spread. By midnight, five more captains had showed up with their crews.
Six out of seven.
Only one was missing.
Tony. My driver of ten years. The man who’d been the first to sell me out.
We’d made our headquarters in an old textile factory. Brick walls. High ceilings. Dust motes dancing in the beams of our flashlights.
I stood on the loading dock, looking out at the army I’d assembled in less than twelve hours.
Elena stood beside me. Gun in hand. Silent. Watchful.
“These men will follow you,” she said. “I can see it in their faces. They don’t care about the money. They care about the truth. About honor. The things Marcus doesn’t understand.”
“Honor won’t stop a bullet,” I said.
“Maybe not. But it’ll make the men firing it think twice.”
Tommy came out of the factory, wiping grease from his hands.
“Everything’s set,” he said. “Snipers on the roofs. Men covering every entrance. The cars are rigged. We’re ready.”
“Marcus?”
“Just got word. He left the downtown office ten minutes ago. He’s bringing about fifty men. And—” Tommy hesitated. “He’s got the Solomons with him. Daniel and his two brothers. All three.”
Good.
I wanted them all in one place.
“Where’s he meeting us?”
“Pier Four. The old docks. Same place where Anthony’s body was found.”
Of course.
Poetry.
Marcus wanted to kill me where his father had died. Full circle.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We moved out in a convoy. Fifteen cars. Lights off. Rolling slow through the empty streets.
I rode in the lead car with Elena and Tommy.
No one spoke.
The docks came into view. Old wooden pilings sticking out of the black water. Cranes silhouetted against the moon. The tide was coming in, slapping against the pilings like distant gunshots.
Pier Four was lit up like a stage.
Floodlights.
Fifty men in a semicircle.
And in the middle, three figures.
Marcus. Tall. Arrogant. Holding a pistol in one hand.
Daniel Solomon. Expensive suit. Cold smile.
And between them—
My blood ran cold.
Sophia.
My wife.
Bound to a wooden chair. Tape over her mouth. A bruise blooming on her cheek.
I reached for the door handle.
Elena grabbed my arm. Hard.
“No,” she whispered. “If you go out there now, they’ll kill her. And you. We stick to the plan.”
I looked at her. Rage was boiling up inside me, hot and red. They had my wife. The only pure thing in my life.
“Vincent,” she said, shaking my arm. “Look at me. We stick to the plan. Or we all die. Including her.”
I forced myself to breathe. Forced myself to think.
She was right.
“Okay,” I said. “Plan.”
We got out of the cars quiet. The men spread out, melting into the shadows between the warehouses and the water.
Tommy’s snipers were already in position on the roof of the nearest warehouse. Crosshairs on every one of Marcus’s men.
I walked out onto the pier alone.
Into the light.
Every gun in the place turned toward me.
Marcus smiled.
“Uncle Vincent,” he called. “So good of you to join us. I was starting to think you’d run. Like the coward you are.”
I kept walking until I was twenty feet from them. Close enough to see the hate in Marcus’s eyes. Close enough to see the smug satisfaction on Daniel Solomon’s face.
Close enough to see the fear in Sophia’s eyes.
She shook her head at me. Tried to say something through the tape.
Go. Run. Save yourself.
I stopped walking.
“Let her go, Marcus,” I said. My voice carried across the water. “This is between you and me. She has nothing to do with this.”
Marcus laughed. It was the same ugly laugh I’d heard in my bedroom.
“Nothing to do with it? She’s your wife. She’s part of you. Everything you love dies tonight. Starting with her.”
He pressed the barrel of his pistol to Sophia’s temple.
She flinched. Closed her eyes.
“Marcus,” I said. “Before you do this—hear me out. You think I killed your father. You’ve got a file. A retired cop. All the answers. But you’ve been lied to. By the man standing right next to you.”
I nodded at Daniel Solomon.
“Bullshit,” Marcus spat.
“Ask him,” I said. “Ask Daniel who really killed your father. Ask him how his family spent twenty years grooming you to be their weapon. Ask him how they forged the file. How they paid off the cop. How they’ve been laughing at you behind your back this whole time.”
Daniel’s smile didn’t falter.
“Don’t listen to him, Marcus,” he said smoothly. “He’s desperate. He’ll say anything to save his own skin. You know the truth. You saw the evidence.”
“I saw what you wanted me to see,” Marcus said. But his voice wavered. Just a little.
I reached into my coat and pulled out Frankie’s envelope. Held it up.
“Everything you need is right here,” I said. “Confession from the actual hitman. The Solomons’ own ledgers. Wire transfers. Proof they killed your father. Proof they framed me. Proof they’ve been using you like a puppet since the day you turned eighteen.”
I tossed the envelope at his feet.
It landed in the dirt between us.
“Read it, Marcus,” I said. “Read it and then look me in the eye and tell me I’m lying.”
Marcus stared at the envelope.
His hand trembled on the gun.
He looked at Daniel.
Daniel’s hand moved toward his own coat.
“Kill him now, Marcus,” Daniel said. His voice was harder now. Urgent. “Before he poisons your mind. Kill him or I will.”
Marcus didn’t move.
He looked from Daniel to the envelope to me.
Twenty years of love and trust warring with six months of lies and rage.
Daniel made his decision.
He drew his gun.
Not at me.
At Marcus.
“If you won’t do it, I will,” he snarled.
Everything happened at once.
A shot rang out from the rooftop.
Daniel’s shoulder exploded in a spray of blood. He screamed and went down.
Chaos.
Marcus’s men started firing.
Tommy’s men opened up from the shadows.
Bullets tore through the wooden pilings. Splinters flew everywhere. Men screamed and fell.
I ran for Sophia.
A bullet zinged past my ear. Another hit the dirt at my feet.
I threw myself at her, knocking the chair over sideways, shielding her body with mine as bullets ripped through the wood above us.
I ripped the tape from her mouth. Untied her hands.
“Go!” I screamed. “Run to the cars! Now!”
She didn’t run.
She grabbed the pistol from my belt, rolled over, and fired three times at a man charging us with a knife. He went down.
“Not without you,” she said.
I stared at her. In twenty-two years of marriage, I’d never seen her hold a gun. Never even knew she could.
“Later,” she said, reading my mind. “Move!”
We crawled through the dirt toward the cover of a crane base. Bullets flew over our heads.
I looked up.
Marcus was standing over Daniel Solomon. Gun in hand.
Daniel was on his back, bleeding out, screaming something about money and deals.
Marcus didn’t hear him.
He was holding Frankie’s envelope in his free hand. The pages were fluttering in the wind.
He looked at me.
Our eyes met across the battlefield.
He raised the gun.
May you like
I didn’t flinch. Didn’t reach for my own weapon.
He pulled the trigger.
