Chapter 6 - Blood Against Blood
The sudden entry of the armed strike team brought the struggle in the living room to a dead halt.
Michael pushed Vincent off him, standing up slowly and wiping a line of dark blood from his lips. He looked at Dr. Cole with a sharp, furious glare. "Cole... what is the meaning of this? You work for me."
Dr. Cole smiled, a cold, clinical expression that held zero warmth. "I worked for your money, Michael. But your money ran out the moment you stopped taking the Swiss transfers. The Moretti family pays significantly better."
Elena gasped, pulling Luca and Nico tightly against her black coat. "The Morettis..."
"Of course," Dr. Cole said calmly. "The Moretti syndicate has wanted the Caruso shipping routes for twenty years. They paid for Michael’s surgeries in Berlin, they funded his return to Chicago, and they used Elena’s desperation to manipulate both brothers into the same room."
Vincent stood up slowly, stepping between the tactical team and his nephews. His beige suit was torn at the shoulder, covered in wood dust, but his blue-gray eyes remained terrifyingly focused. "So there was no grand family reunion. This was just a execution organized by Moretti."
"Precisely," Dr. Cole said, raising the detonator. "The charges under this cabin are wired to trigger in three minutes. When the police arrive, they will find the entire Caruso bloodline wiped out in a tragic internal family feud. The Morettis will take control of the Chicago docks by sunrise."
Marcus Hale, bleeding from a graze on his temple, slowly slid his hand behind his back toward his tactical knife. "Cole... you forgot one detail."
"Oh? And what is that?" Cole asked, his finger hovering over the red button.
"You left the little girl in the car," Marcus gritted out.
A sudden, high-pitched car horn echoed from the driveway outside.
Through the broken front window, the heavy black armored sedan Vincent had driven came tearing through the wooden porch pillars at forty miles an hour.
The vehicle smashed through the front wall of the cabin, shower of oak beams, glass, and drywall exploding into the living room. Two of Cole's tactical guards were pinned instantly beneath the wreckage.
In the front driver's seat of the sedan, six-year-old Clara was standing on the leather console, her small hands pulling the gear shift lever back, her damaged stuffed rabbit wedged against the accelerator pedal just as Vincent had taught her during their drive.
"Now!" Vincent shouted.
Vincent lunged forward, slamming his fist into Dr. Cole’s jaw. The doctor crashed back against the stone fireplace, dropping the digital detonator onto the floor.
Marcus sprinted across the dust-filled room, tackling the remaining tactical guard to the floor and disarming his submachine gun in a fluid, practiced movement.
Michael grabbed the dropped detonator from the floor, his scarred face twisted in manic rage. "If I can't have Chicago, nobody can!"
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"Michael, no!" Elena screamed.
Vincent leaped across the broken coffee table, catching Michael around the waist as both brothers crashed through the rear glass doors, tumbling out onto the muddy, rain-slicked bluff above the quarry lake.
