Chapter 6 - The Summit at Sheepshead Bay
The midnight air off Sheepshead Bay tasted of diesel fuel, rotting kelp, and the cold, unyielding salt of the Atlantic.
Three black Lincoln Navigators rolled silently down the cracked asphalt of the commercial pier without their headlights on, their high-performance engines purring like caged panthers. They came to a synchronized halt twenty yards from an old, rusted fish-processing warehouse whose corrugated tin roof rattled violently in the offshore gale.
The back doors opened simultaneously.
Dominic Moretti stepped out onto the damp concrete, adjusting the collar of his heavy black wool overcoat against the biting wind. Behind him stepped Marcus and four heavily armed members of his tactical strike team, their suppressed automatic weapons held at low ready.
“They’re inside, boss,” Marcus muttered, checking the digital readout on his tactical radio. “Thermal imaging shows three heat signatures in the main office on the second floor. Vince Caliri, his son Marco, and two armed bodyguards.”
“Good,” Dominic said coldly. “Let’s go collect our debt.”
They didn't bother knocking. Marcus kicked the rotten wooden door of the warehouse off its rusted hinges with a single, brutal blow of his combat boot, the wood shattering inward with a deafening crash.
The tactical team swarmed the ground floor in absolute, terrifying silence, clearing the lower rooms in seconds before moving up the iron staircase toward the second-floor office.
Inside the makeshift boardroom, two elderly men sitting around a scarred wooden table looked up in sheer terror as the door was kicked open a second time.
Vince Caliri—an aging mob boss whose glory days had ended twenty years ago—dropped his cigar onto a grease-stained map spread across the table. Beside him, his son Marco, a cocky thirty-something wearing a diamond-studded gold chain and an expensive leather jacket, instinctively scrambled for the nickel-plated revolver resting beside his whiskey glass.
“Don’t,” Dominic said.
The single word carried the weight of a falling anvil. Marco froze, his hand hovering an inch away from the gun grip, as Marcus stepped forward and pressed the cold muzzle of a suppressed rifle directly against Marco’s temple.
Dominic walked slowly into the center of the room, his dark eyes sweeping over the two Caliris with cold, majestic disdain.
“Dominic,” Vince Caliri wheezed, forcing a crooked, yellow-toothed smile onto his wrinkled face as he leaned back in his chair. “To what do we owe the pleasure? Dropping by to discuss the New Jersey shipping contracts?”
“I didn't come to discuss contracts, Vince,” Dominic said, pulling out a chair and sitting down uninvited at the head of the table. He rested his hands flat on the wood, leaning forward. “I came to talk about a birthday cake.”
Marco’s eyes flicked nervously toward his father. “What are you talking about? We don't know anything about a cake. We’re legitimate businessmen.”
“Arthur Vance confessed,” Dominic stated flatly, his voice cutting through the stale tobacco smoke like a scalpel. “He told us about the synthetic alkaloid poison, the meeting behind the freight yards in Brooklyn, the twenty thousand dollar retainer, and the promise of a percentage of the North River terminal rights once my son was hospitalized.”
The color drained from Vince Caliri’s face. The old man slumped back in his chair, suddenly looking every one of his seventy-five years. He knew that when Dominic Moretti showed up personally with an execution squad, negotiations were long past.
“He failed, then,” Vince whispered.
“He failed,” Dominic agreed. “Because a three-year-old child had better eyes, sharper instincts, and a hell of a lot more courage than your entire syndicate combined.”
Marco suddenly lunged forward, his face twisting with desperate fury. “You can’t touch us, Moretti! The Commission in Manhattan—they’ll retaliate! You start a war over a failed hit and the whole city goes up in—”
Bang.
Dominic didn't even flinch. Marcus’s rifle discharged into the floorboards three inches from Marco’s boot, sending a shower of wood splinters flying into the young gangster’s face and causing him to tumble backward out of his chair with a terrified shriek.
“The Commission doesn't care about a dying family of relics who have to resort to poisoning children because they can't win a legitimate business war,” Dominic said, his voice dropping into that lethal, quiet register that made the room feel devoid of oxygen. “The Caliri family name ends tonight. Your commercial properties along the Hudson are forfeit. Your warehouses belong to my shipping logistics division. And you two…”
Dominic stood up slowly, looking down at Vince and Marco like a judge reading a death warrant.
“You’re going on a very long, very permanent vacation to a place where nobody will ever find your bodies.”
May you like
As Marcus and his men moved in, binding the two Caliris with heavy plastic zip-ties, Dominic turned and walked out of the warehouse into the cold night air. The war was over before the sun had even begun to rise. The threat was neutralized.
And for the first time in seven years, Dominic Moretti felt the crushing weight on his chest begin to lift.
