Chapter 4 - THE SIEGE OF THE HUDSON
The lower level of the cliffside fortress was built into solid granite bedrock, designed to withstand a military assault.
The grand exhibition hall—a vast room featuring floor-to-ceiling stone pillars, ancient armor displays, and a sweeping iron balcony—was now filled with the smoke of flashbang grenades and the deafening roar of automatic gunfire.
Don Victor Vance walked through the shattered oak doors of the hall, his submachine gun raised, flanked by fifteen heavy mercenaries.
"Damiano!" Victor’s voice echoed off the stone walls, crazed and desperate. "Come out, you coward! Your perimeter guards are dead! Your fortress is surrounded! Hand over the maid and the child, and I might let you take a bullet like a man!"
From high up on the second-floor iron balcony, Damiano stood in the shadow of a granite pillar, his tactical vest loaded with extra magazines.
Beside him, hiding safely inside the reinforced panic room behind a hidden bookshelf, were Sophia and Emma. Sophia was holding a small 9mm pistol that Damiano had given her, her eyes trained on the steel door, ready to protect her child with her life if anyone breached the room.
"You always were bad at math, Victor," Damiano’s voice boomed down from the darkness of the ceiling rafters, sounding as if it came from everywhere at once.
Victor spun around, firing a spray of bullets toward the ceiling. "Show yourself, Moretti!"
"You thought you tracked my location using your mercenaries," Damiano’s voice continued smoothly. "Did you ever stop to ask yourself why my security codes were so easy for your hackers to bypass tonight?"
Victor’s eyes widened in sudden, horrifying realization. "A trap..."
CLICK!
Heavy iron blast doors suddenly slammed down from the ceiling behind Victor’s team, sealing the entrance and exit of the grand hall with eight-inch-thick solid steel plates.
"You brought thirty men to my fortress, Victor," Damiano said, stepping out onto the iron balcony, looking down at the trapped mercenaries like a judge overlooking a pit of doomed souls. "But I have three hundred soldiers surrounding this cliff right now."
High above the glass skylights of the hall, the loud, rhythmic thudding of three heavy black helicopters filled the air.
CRASH!
The glass skylights shattered in a rain of crystal fragments as dozens of elite Moretti tactical operators abseiled down from the helicopters on steel cables, firing silenced rifles with lethal, robotic precision as they descended.
"FIRE! KILL THEM ALL!" Victor shrieked, backing toward a pillar.
The grand hall erupted into absolute chaos.
Damiano leaned over the balcony rail, firing his custom heavy pistol with deadly accuracy. Each shot took down a Vance mercenary before the man could even align his sights.
Victor Vance, bleeding from a shoulder wound, looked up and spotted the hidden bookshelf door on the second floor flickering with light. He realized instantly where the maid and the child were hiding.
"If I die, you die with me, Moretti!" Victor screamed, pulling a heavy thermite grenade from his tactical belt.
He scrambled up the grand spiral staircase toward the panic room, pulling the pin on the incendiary device, intending to blow the door off its hinges and incinerate everyone inside.
"SOPHIA! STAY BACK!" Damiano shouted, jumping over the iron balcony railing.
Damiano dropped fifteen feet through the air, landing heavily on the marble steps directly in front of Victor.
Before Victor could throw the primed grenade, Damiano grabbed the old man’s wrist, twisting it violently until the bones cracked loudly.
"AAAAAGH!" Victor screamed in agony, dropping his submachine gun.
Damiano grabbed Victor by the throat, slamming his back against the stone wall of the staircase with enough force to shatter the plaster. With his left hand, Damiano grabbed Victor’s arm, forcing the old man’s hand shut around the live thermite grenade.
"This is for threatening my family," Damiano whispered into Victor’s ear, his eyes burning with absolute, terrifying vengeance.
Damiano kicked Victor violently in the chest, sending the old boss tumbling down the long spiral staircase.
Victor crashed onto the ground floor below, his hand trapped beneath his own body as the thermite grenade detonated in a blinding flash of thousand-degree white fire.
The remaining Vance mercenaries dropped their weapons, falling to their knees with their hands raised in absolute surrender as Marco and forty Moretti soldiers flooded the floor, securing the building.
The air in the grand hall slowly settled. The smoke cleared, revealing the total, undisputed victory of the Moretti syndicate.
Damiano turned around, his chest heaving, his dark clothing covered in ash and dust. He walked up the remaining steps to the panic room and knocked three times—their secret code.
The heavy door slid open.
Sophia rushed out, dropping her gun onto the floor, and threw her arms around Damiano’s neck. She wept tears of overwhelming relief, pressing her face against his neck, kissing his cheeks, his jaw, and his lips.
"It's over," Sophia sobbed. "It's finally over."
Damiano held her tightly against his heart, lifting her up, his strong arms wrapping around her generous waist as if he would never let her go again.
Emma stepped out of the room, clutching her new rag doll, looking at the two of them with a big, bright smile.
"Did you break the bad man, Mr. Damiano?" Emma asked innocently.
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Damiano looked down at the little girl, a warm, soft smile breaking across his face as he lowered Sophia back to her feet. He reached down with his free hand, scooping Emma up onto his heavy shoulder.
"The bad men are gone, piccola," Damiano promised, pulling both mother and daughter close against his side. "And nobody is ever going to scare you again."
