Chapter 8 - The Fall of Viktor Vance
Three days later, a closed-door summit took place at the abandoned maritime terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn—neutral territory shared by the city’s ruling families.
Viktor Vance, a burly, paranoid man with cold blue eyes and a permanent sneer, sat at the head of a rusted metal table. Surrounding him were six armed lieutenants.
The heavy metal doors groaned open, and Alessandro Moretti walked in.
He was not alone.
By his side walked Sophie Dubois. She wore a tailored crimson designer suit that radiated power and elegance, her honey-blonde hair pinned back in a sleek chignon. She carried a sleek silver laptop case.
Vance laughed harshly, standing up from his chair. "Moretti? You brought a woman to a syndicate sit-down? Have you lost your mind?"
"Sit down, Viktor," Alessandro commanded, taking a seat and gesturing for Sophie to place the laptop on the table. "You're about to be audited."
"Audited?" Vance scoffed. "You think you can stroll in here with your little girlfriend and—"
Sophie snapped the laptop open. Her fingers flew across the keyboard with lightning speed, bypassing three layers of military-grade firewalls before entering her biometric thumbprint into the master portal.
Instantly, the wall-mounted projector behind Vance lit up, displaying hundreds of scanned pages of the micro-ledger, complete with bank routing numbers, offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, and signed wire transfers linking Viktor Vance directly to the systematic embezzlement of Moretti shipping funds.
Vance’s face turned the color of curdled milk.
"Where... where did you get that?" Vance stammered, his hand instinctively dropping toward the holster beneath his jacket.
Before his fingers could even graze his gun, the shadows around the terminal erupted.
Dozens of Moretti enforcers stepped out from behind shipping containers, their weapons locked directly on Vance and his men. At the same time, the heavy exterior doors slammed shut, accompanied by the wail of approaching federal sirens—the FBI task force Alessandro had coordinated with ten minutes prior.
"It’s over, Viktor," Alessandro said coldly, standing up and buttoning his jacket. "Your ports are frozen. Your accounts are seized. And your assets belong to the Moretti-Dubois estate."
Vance lunged forward with a desperate, suicidal roar, pulling a concealed blade from his sleeve—and aimed straight for Sophie.
In a blur of motion, Alessandro intercepted him. With brutal, calculated efficiency, Alessandro disarmed Vance in a single fluid movement, slamming the syndicate boss face-first onto the rusted metal table with a sickening crunch.
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"Don't ever look at my wife," Alessandro whispered into Vance’s ear, his voice carrying the terrifying weight of absolute death, "let alone touch her."
Federal agents swarmed the warehouse seconds later, dragging Vance and his lieutenants away in heavy steel handcuffs.
