Chapter 12
The freight depot at Pier 4 looked like a graveyard of rusted shipping containers and abandoned train cars. Rain poured from the slate-gray sky, drumming a relentless rhythm against the corrugated metal roofs.
Clara parked the sedan behind a stack of rotted wooden pallets, three hundred yards from the main warehouse. She turned off the lights and engine.
She leaned into the backseat. "Emma, sweetheart, wake up."
Emma rubbed her eyes, clutching Mr. Bunny. "Are we at Grandma's?"
"Not yet, my love," Clara said softly, pulling Emma into her arms and wrapping her inside a thick wool coat. "We have to play the quiet mouse game one more time. You cannot make a sound, no matter what you hear. Do you promise Mommy?"
Emma nodded solemnly. "I promise."
Clara tucked Julian’s handgun into her waistband, zipped her jacket over it, and carried Emma toward the side pedestrian entrance of the warehouse.
The service door was unlocked, hanging open by an inch. Inside, the massive depot was lit by flickering sodium floodlights. A line of rusted green freight lockers stood against the far brick wall, directly beneath an elevated steel catwalk.
Standing beneath the lockers, surrounded by six armed enforcers, was Don Ricci.
The old boss was staring at an open locker—door number 402. Inside sat a heavy steel military transport chest, sealed with a digital keypad and an old-fashioned double-cylinder keyhole.
"Where is the key?!" Ricci roared, his walking cane striking the concrete floor with a violent crack.
Standing beside him, bleeding from a split lip and bound to a support beam with zip-ties, was Leo—Alessandro’s young lieutenant.
"I don't have it," Leo gasped, coughing. "Vivian was supposed to get it from the child."
"That useless Romano whore failed!" Ricci spat. "She let the maid slip through her fingers! The key is the only thing that bypasses the thermite charge inside that chest! If I drill it, twenty million dollars and the Valenti ledger turn to ash!"
Clara’s heart pounded against her ribs. She was hidden behind a stack of industrial oil drums fifty feet away.
*The key in Emma's rabbit wasn't just a trinket. It was a failsafe.*
"Boss!" one of Ricci’s guards called out, pointing toward the glass entrance doors at the far end of the depot. "Vehicle approaching! High speed!"
A black Moretti SUV smashed straight through the depot’s glass roll-up doors, metal and glass exploding across the concrete.
The SUV spun into a tactical barricade. The driver’s door kicked open, and Alessandro Moretti stepped out into the rain and glaring floodlights, an automatic rifle in his hands.
He was alone.
His face was streaked with soot and rain, his black suit soaked, but his eyes burned with lethal, unyielding fury.
"Ricci!" Alessandro’s voice boomed through the cavernous warehouse.
Ricci’s guards instantly raised their rifles, but Ricci held up a hand, a sinister grin spreading across his face.
"Alessandro," Ricci called out, stepping into the open. "You survived my welcoming party at the passenger station. I'm impressed. But you're too late. Your little foster brother’s secrets belong to me now."
"You killed Lucas," Alessandro said, walking forward with deliberate, steady steps, his rifle aimed at Ricci’s chest. "You poisoned him in the Alps."
"Lucas was a dog who bit the hand that fed him," Ricci scoffed. "He thought he could save Lorenzo Moretti from the harbor fire. But you know the funniest part, Alessandro?"
Alessandro stopped twenty paces away. "Talk."
"Lucas didn't save Lorenzo," Ricci sneered. "Lucas *betrayed* Lorenzo. He locked Lorenzo inside the transport before the bomb went off. And then he stole Lorenzo’s newborn daughter and handed her to a naive little schoolteacher in Syracuse to keep the Moretti bloodline under his thumb forever!"
Behind the oil drums, Clara gasped, the air rushing from her lungs.
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Ricci wasn't just claiming Julian was a thief. He was claiming Julian was the monster who murdered Alessandro’s brother.
***
