Chapter 4 - The Battle for the Heir
The bullet passed cleanly through the iron bars and struck Dr. Vance directly in the right shoulder.
The doctor let out a high-pitched shriek, dropping the scalpel onto the concrete floor as he spun around, clutching his bleeding arm.
"What the hell?!" one of the Falcone guards screamed, swinging his submachine gun toward the iron grate.
I kicked the ancient iron door off its rusted hinges with all the weight in my body. The heavy metal frame crashed down onto the platform, crushing the feet of the first guard and sending him sprawling across the concrete.
I leaped off the ledge, landing on top of him with my knee driving into his collarbone. Before he could raise his weapon, I pressed my gun under his chin and pulled the trigger twice.
The second guard opened fire, spraying bullets across the room. Sparks flew off the steel equipment stands, shattering the IV bottles and sending thick glass and clear saline fluid raining over the floor.
I rolled behind a row of heavy oak wine barrels, concrete dust spraying into my eyes.
"Dominic?!" Grace’s scream echoed through the vault—not a scream of terror, but a desperate, raw cry of hope. "Dominic!"
"I'm here, Grace!" I yelled back, firing two shots around the side of the barrel to force the remaining guard back behind the generator. "I'm right here!"
"Kill him!" Victoria’s voice roared from the far side of the platform. She was no longer calm. Her composure had vanished, replaced by the ugly, frantic rage of a woman whose carefully constructed illusion was collapsing around her. "Shoot him, you idiot! Don't let him get near the table!"
The guard behind the generator leaned out, blind-firing his automatic rifle in my direction. Bullets chewed through the oak barrels behind me, sending stream after stream of century-old red wine pouring onto the concrete floor, mixing with the blood and saline.
I pulled a small flashbang grenade from the tactical pouch on my belt—a parting gift I had taken from the weapons locker in my private jet.
I pulled the pin with my teeth, cooked it for one second, and tossed it high over the wine barrels toward the generator.
BOOM!
A blinding white light and a deafening shockwave shattered the darkness of the cellar. The generator sputtered violently, its belt snapping, and the halogen work lights flickered out, leaving only the dim red emergency lights along the walls.
The guard let out a scream, clutching his eyes and ears as he stumbled out from behind the generator, completely disoriented.
I stepped out from cover, walked up to him, and placed a single shot through his forehead. He dropped like a sack of wet concrete.
Silence returned to the vault, broken only by the sound of Grace’s frantic breathing and the slow drip of wine from the shattered barrels.
I turned toward the surgical table.
Dr. Vance was crawling across the floor toward the lift doors, leaving a thick trail of blood behind him. My mother stood near the chrome instrument tray, her white suit splattered with red wine and oil.
In her right hand, she was holding the bloody scalpel Dr. Vance had dropped.
She had the blade pressed directly against the soft skin of Grace’s throat.
"Step back, Dominic," Victoria spat, her hair falling out of its neat bun, her eyes wild and bloodshot. "Step back right now, or I will cut her neck before you can raise that gun!"
I stopped twenty feet away, my Beretta aimed directly at my mother's chest.
"Mother," I said, my voice dropping into a register that was completely devoid of human warmth. "Drop the blade."
"You think you've won?!" Victoria laughed hysterically, her hand shaking against Grace’s throat. "You think you can take this weak little girl and live happily ever after? Look at her! She’s dying anyway! Her pulse is failing! The baby will die inside her in five minutes if she doesn't get a C-section right now!"
"Dominic..." Grace whispered, her eyes rolling back slightly toward the ceiling. "The... the baby... save the baby..."
"Shut up!" Victoria screamed, pressing the blade slightly deeper. A thin bead of red blood appeared on Grace’s neck. "You ruined my family! I spent thirty years building the Rossi name! I sacrificed my life for your father! I won't let a nobody from the gutters destroy everything I built!"
"Mother," I said quietly, taking one slow, deliberate step forward. "Look at my eyes."
Victoria blinked, her gaze shifting to my face for a fraction of a second.
"Do you see my father in my eyes?" I asked softly. "Because he was a gentle man who let you run his life. He was a man who let you dictate who he could love and who he could fight."
I took another step.
"I am not my father," I continued. "If you touch my wife again, I won't just kill you. I will dismantle the Falcone family piece by piece. I will hunt down your brothers in Palermo. I will burn your father's estate to the ground. I will erase your maiden name from every ledger in Europe."
Victoria’s hand trembled violently. For the first time in her life, she saw that I wasn't her son anymore. I was the Don of the Rossi syndicate—a man who had survived six months of war in Europe and had come home with blood on his hands.
"You... you wouldn't..." she stammered, stepping back an inch from the table.
Before she could recover her composure, a shot rang out from the darkness near the lift.
A bullet struck Victoria’s right wrist, shattering the small bones. She screamed in pain, dropping the scalpel onto the concrete floor as she fell back against the wall.
I turned my head slightly.
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Standing by the lift doors, holding an ancient double-barreled shotgun with smoke curling from the right barrel, was Matteo.
"I served your husband for thirty years, Victoria," the old butler said, his voice cold and steady despite his advanced age. "And he would have shot you himself if he had lived to see this day."
