Chapter 8 - The Siege of 111 Murray
Matteo Duca did not enter the room through the door; he came through the smoke like an avenging angel of iron and blood.
His greatcoat was gone. His white poplin shirt was shredded across the left shoulder, soaked in dark, arterial crimson that was not his own. His face was smeared with carbon black, his knuckles raw and split to the bone. In his right hand, he carried a short, matte-black Benelli tactical shotgun; in his left, he held the Heckler & Koch, the slide locked back on an empty chamber.
He didn't speak.
He didn't shout a warning.
The Benelli fired twice in less than a second—two deafening, concussive blasts that tore through the mechanical room with the authority of divine judgment.
The two Sicilians from Montreal were lifted off their feet by the heavy double-ought buckshot, thrown backward against the green cylinder of the water scrubber, and slid to the concrete floor in a heap of torn nylon and shattered bone.
Corvo, still clutching his shattered chest, dropped to his knees on the diamond plate.
The mechanical room fell into a terrifying, unnatural silence, broken only by the continuous, deep thrum of the water pumps and the wet, rattling wheeze of Corvo’s punctured lungs.
Matteo dropped the empty shotgun.
It clattered against the iron decking with a hollow, metallic ring. He didn't look at Corvo. He didn't look at the dead men by the scrubber.
He walked past them, his heavy boots leaving bloody prints on the diamond plate, until he stood two feet from Cameron.
Cameron stood her ground.
The silver revolver was still raised, its barrel smoking, her thumb resting on the cocked hammer. Her arms were shaking violently now—the adrenaline that had carried her through the freight hoist finally crashing through her nervous system like cold seawater.
Matteo reached out.
Very slowly, with immense care, his large, blood-streaked hand closed over the cylinder of the revolver, his thumb slipping between the hammer and the firing pin to render it safe.
"It's over, Cameron," he whispered.
His voice was cracked, raw, completely stripped of the Don’s imperious control.
Cameron looked down at his hand. She looked at the red blood smeared across his cuffs, at the deep gash along his temple where a bullet had creased the skin, and then up into his pale, ice-grey eyes.
The gun slipped from her fingers into his palm.
"Leo," she gasped, her knees finally giving way. "He’s... he’s safe. He was so brave, Matteo. He didn't cry. He—"
Matteo caught her before her knees could touch the concrete.
He pulled her up against his chest, his powerful arms wrapping around her waist and the back of her head, lifting her completely off her feet. He buried his face into the curve of her neck, his body shaking with the same violent, rhythmic shudders she had felt on the seawall at Battery Park.
"I have you," he murmured into her skin, his lips pressing against the pulse point that was hammering frantic and wild at her throat. "I have you both. It's done. Cameron, it's done."
From the floor beside them, a small hand tugged at the hem of Matteo’s torn shirt.
Matteo looked down.
Leo stood there, looking up at his father through the haze of cordite smoke. His small knit cap had fallen off, his dark curls sticking to his forehead with sweat. He looked at the blood on his father’s sleeves, then at the dead men by the scrubber, and then up into Matteo’s face.
"Dada," Leo said.
He didn't sound afraid. He sounded like a prince inspecting the perimeter of his fortress.
"Dada broke the bad men," the boy stated.
Matteo sank onto one knee, keeping one arm locked around Cameron’s waist as he pulled his son into the circle of his chest with the other. He pressed his forehead against Leo’s, his breath coming in ragged, shuddering hitches.
"I did, little bird," Matteo whispered. "They're gone. Nobody is ever going to hurt this house again."
On the floor ten feet away, Antonio Corvo let out a wet, bubbling cough.
"Matteo..." the underboss gasped, his fingers clawing at the slick diamond plate as he tried to drag his ruined body toward the fire escape. "Matteo... please... it was Valenti... he had my cousins in Palermo... he was going to take the concrete..."
Matteo didn't move immediately. He held Cameron. He held Leo.
Then, very slowly, he turned his head to look at the man who had served his father for twenty years.
The warmth that had softened his face when he touched his son evaporated, replaced by a coldness so absolute, so terrifyingly final, that even the air in the mechanical room seemed to freeze.
"Antonio," Matteo said softly.
He stood up, stepping smoothly between Cameron and the dying man.
"You brought gunmen into the room where my son sleeps," Matteo said, his voice flat as a tombstone. "You put your hand toward the woman who saved his life. And you thought because my father was old, and I was grieving, that the Duca family had forgotten how to butcher its pigs."
Matteo reached down and picked up the Colt .45 that Corvo had dropped on the decking.
He racked the slide back, clearing the stove-piped round that had jammed in the ejection port, letting the fresh brass cartridge click into the chamber.
"Matteo, please!" Corvo wept, blood bubbling over his lips. "For Salvatore! For your father!"
"My father left a ledger, Antonio," Matteo said, raising the heavy pistol until it was level with the space between Corvo’s small, piggish eyes. "And you are the last name on the page."
Cameron didn't look away.
She didn't close her eyes. She reached down, picked Leo up, and tucked his face securely against her shoulder, pressing her palm over the boy’s ear so he would hear only the steady, unbroken rhythm of her own heart.
*BANG.*
The sound was final. It was the closing of a book; the settling of an account; the end of thirty years of blood and grease on the Hudson docks.
Matteo lowered the weapon.
He tossed the pistol onto Corvo’s chest, turned his back on the body, and walked back to where Cameron stood holding his son.
The elevator hoist chimed from the darkness of the shaft.
The primary doors opened, and Franco stepped out, his suit torn, holding a tactical carbine at the low ready. Behind him were six more men from the loyalist faction in Brooklyn, their faces grim, their weapons ready.
"The building is clear, Boss," Franco said, his eyes sweeping the mechanical room, lingering for a second on Corvo’s corpse before snapping back to Matteo. "Valenti was taken at the perimeter on West Street. He’s in the back of a van heading for the scrap yard."
Matteo nodded once. "Burn the van. When he's inside it."
"Yes, Boss."
Matteo looked back at Cameron.
The smoke was beginning to clear, sucked away by the massive intake fans of the ventilation risers. The morning sun, rising over the East River, pierced through the high industrial louvers at the top of the mechanical cathedral, casting long, golden bars of light across the concrete floor.
Matteo reached out and took his son from her arms.
Leo went willingly, wrapping his small arms around his father’s neck, resting his chin on the dark, blood-stained wool of Matteo’s collar. The boy looked at Cameron, reached out his small hand, and touched her cheek.
"Cam," Leo whispered. "Home now?"
Cameron looked at Matteo.
The mafia boss—the man whose name was feared in every borough, whose hands had just taken four lives in the space of six minutes—looked at her with an expression that was completely, terrifyingly stripped of defenses.
"Home," Matteo said.
He reached out his other hand, his fingers intertwining with Cameron’s, his scarred knuckles locking with hers with an iron grip that told her, more clearly than any contract or ledger, that the gates of the fortress were closed, and she was forever on the inside.
"Come home, Cameron," he whispered.
May you like
And for the first time since she had stepped out of the service elevator four weeks ago, Cameron Jenkins did not feel the weight of Queens, she did not feel the coldness of the marble, and she did not look behind her.
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