Chapter 4 - The Vultures Gather
The footsteps stopped right outside the medical suite.
Through the frosted glass panels of the double doors, three distinct silhouettes loomed.
“I’m telling you, the doctor said he’s gone,” a harsh, arrogant voice echoed through the metal doors. It was Carmine Rossi. “The estate is legally in probate until the council meets tonight. We need to secure the safe in the underground vault before the federal marshals sniff around.”
“And who’s going to open it, Carmine?” another voice replied—Salazar, a mid-level enforcer. “You don't have the combination.”
“I’ll take it off the body if I have to,” Carmine snapped impatiently.
Inside the medical suite, Gabriel didn't flinch. He didn't reach for a gun. He simply adjusted the black wool coat over his shoulders, his slate-gray eyes fixed calmly on the entrance.
He looked up at Matilda, who was standing frozen beside him, terror flashing across her face.
“Go stand by the corner, Matilda,” Gabriel instructed softly, his voice steady and reassuring. “And watch how a throne is reclaimed.”
Matilda hurried to the corner behind the instrument cart, clutching her hands together.
Gabriel slipped off the examination table. His legs were slightly stiff from hours of clinical hypothermia, but his stride was steady as he walked slowly toward the double doors, positioning himself directly in the center of the room, half-shrouded in the shadows beneath the flickering fluorescent lights.
Click.
The heavy brass handle turned.
The double doors swung wide open.
Carmine Rossi marched into the room, dressed in an expensive charcoal suit, a lit cigar dangling from the corner of his mouth, holding a leather briefcase. Behind him stepped Salazar and two other heavily armed enforcers.
Carmine stopped dead in his tracks.
The cigar slipped from his lips, hitting the concrete floor with a soft tud, rolling a few inches before coming to a stop.
The color drained entirely from Carmine’s face. His eyes bulged behind his eyelids as he stared across the room at the man standing beneath the overhead lights.
It wasn't a corpse wrapped in a white sheet.
It was Gabriel Falcone—alive, breathing, standing tall, and looking at them with the calm, dead-eyed gaze of an executioner.
“G-Gabriel...?” Carmine stammered, his voice pitching upward into a terrified squeak, his knees buckling slightly as if he had just seen a ghost walk out of a crypt. “B-but... the doctor said... we checked the pulse... you were dead—”
“I was,” Gabriel said quietly, his voice a low, lethal baritone that vibrated off the stone walls. “And while I was gone, Carmine, I watched you unpack my bags and sell my house.”
Salazar and the other enforcers panicked. Instinctively, their hands flew toward the shoulder holsters beneath their jackets, desperate to finish the job before word got out.
They never cleared leather.
Before Salazar’s fingers could wrap around the grip of his pistol, a dozen armed men—loyal Falcone shadow guards who had remained hidden in the secondary security annex—poured out of the side corridors, their submachine guns raised and locked dead-center on the traitors' chests.
“Drop your weapons,” Gabriel commanded, his voice dropping an octave colder. “Now.”
Salazar’s hands froze mid-air. He looked at the circle of drawn weapons, looked at Gabriel standing unharmed and blazing with life, and slowly raised his empty palms above his head, dropping to his knees.
Carmine Rossi, however, was paralyzed by pure, unadulterated terror. He looked back and forth between the guns and Gabriel’s cold, unblinking eyes.
“Boss... I swear to God... I thought you were gone... it was just a misunderstanding... we were securing the perimeter—!” Carmine wept openly, his arrogance vanishing into pathetic whimpering as he dropped heavily onto the floor.
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Gabriel walked slowly toward him, his heavy leather shoes clicking rhythmically against the concrete.
He stopped right in front of the cowering capo, looking down at him with utter contempt.
