Chapter 4 - Crossfire in the Hills
"Drop the gun, Vincent."
The voice came from the grand staircase. Vincent didn't need to look up to recognize it. It belonged to Dante Vance—Salvador’s own consigliere, a man who had supposedly been loyal to the Moretti family for twenty years.
Vincent slowly turned his head, keeping the barrel of his pistol trained on Salvador’s chest while his peripheral vision tracked the movement upstairs. Dante stood at the top of the landing, holding a suppressed submachine gun aimed squarely at Vincent’s head. Standing beside him were three armed mercenaries wearing unmarked tactical gear—no Moretti insignia, no family colors.
"Dante?" Salvador sputtered, trying to turn his head to look up the stairs. "What is the meaning of this? Put that gun down!"
"Shut up, old man," Dante sneered, his voice dripping with venom. "Your time is over. Both of yours."
Vincent narrowed his eyes. The puzzle pieces suddenly snapped into place with terrifying clarity. "You set up the meeting between me and Elena," Vincent said, his voice cold as ice. "You leaked the shipping manifests. And you sent those thugs to her apartment to frame Salvador."
"Bingo, Torino," Dante laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "For two years, you and Salvador have been playing checkers while I’ve been building a real empire. All I needed was a spark. If Elena died tonight, you would blame Salvador. You’d wipe out the Moretti family in a bloodbath, and while you were busy cleaning up the mess, I’d step in and take over both of your syndicates. Clean. Quiet. Profitable."
Salvador stared at his consigliere in absolute horror. "You traitorous bastard..."
"I'm a visionary, Sal," Dante replied, tightening his finger on the trigger. "And now... goodbye, bosses."
Dante didn't get to fire.
In the fraction of a second Dante had spent gloating, Marco had slipped silently through the side entrance behind the staircase, raising his shotgun. Before Dante could squeeze the trigger, Marco’s weapon thundered, sending a load of buckshot directly into the wall beside Dante’s head and showering the landing with splinters.
The mercenaries opened fire, bullets shattering the glass chandelier overhead and sending crystal shards raining down like deadly rain.
"Get down!" Vincent roared, shoving Salvador hard to the floor as a volley of rounds chewed through the oak wall right where his head had been a second before.
Vincent rolled, drawing his second weapon from his ankle holster, and fired two rapid shots upward through the wooden railing. A muffled cry echoed from the landing as one of Dante’s mercenaries dropped his weapon and tumbled over the side, crashing onto the marble floor below.
"Marco! Cover the flank!" Vincent shouted over the deafening roar of gunfire.
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"Got it, Boss!" Marco yelled back, pumping his shotgun and firing another devastating blast toward the top of the stairs.
The Moretti estate had instantly transformed into a war zone, but Vincent Torino wasn't thinking about turf, money, or the Commission anymore. His mind was fixed on one thing and one thing only: surviving this firefight, hunting down Dante Vance, and making sure the man who hurt Elena paid for every single drop of blood he had spilled.
