Chapter 9 - Retribution at Dawn
The subterranean boat engine rumbled to life below, its muffled roar echoing through the drainage vents before fading out into the churning swells of Lake Michigan.
They were gone. Safe.
Vincent ascended the concrete steps into the burning shell of his ancestral home.
The heat met him first. Smoke rolled across the ceiling in oily black ribbons, lit by the angry orange embers of the burning courtyard vehicles. The grand chandelier in the foyer hung lopsided, half its crystal pendants shattered across the bloody white Carrara marble.
In the center of the ruin stood Carlo Bellandi.
The rival Don had discarded his fine overcoat, his silver cane resting against an overturned marble pedestal. Beside him, Anthony Rizzo was on his hands and knees, wheezing, coughing up black soot. Three heavily armed mercenaries formed a loose perimeter around the foyer, their rifles aimed toward the collapsed western wing where they assumed the remaining Torino loyalists were trapped.
Vincent stepped through the arched doorway of the butler’s gallery into plain sight.
He didn't take cover. He didn't run.
"You made a mess of my floor, Carlo," Vincent said.
The three mercenaries whipped around, weapons snapping up.
Vincent didn't flinch. Behind the mercenaries, stepping through the blown-out terrace doors from the lawn, four shadows emerged from the drifting smoke.
Luca—Vincent’s North Side capo—had arrived. Behind him were six seasoned Torino hitters, their heavy submachine guns raised, sights centered dead on the backs of Bellandi’s men.
"Drop the iron," Luca growled, the cold steel of his barrel practically touching the lead mercenary's neck. "Now."
The mercenaries took half a second to calculate the odds. Outflanked, outgunned, and abandoned. Slowly, the three men let their tactical rifles clatter onto the marble tiles, raising their gloved hands.
"Outside," Luca barked. His men disarmed them with brutal efficiency, dragging them through the smoking archway into the courtyard.
The grand foyer was left with four men: Vincent, Luca, Carlo Bellandi, and the shivering traitor on the floor.
Carlo’s arrogant smirk finally withered. The color left his weathered, sun-tanned skin, replaced by a ghastly, hollow gray. His grip tightened around the heavy silver handle of his revolver, but he didn't raise it. Looking into Vincent’s eyes, he knew that raising a gun now would merely decide which part of his body took the first bullet.
"Vincent," Carlo started, his voice lacking its previous operatic thunder. "We're men of honor. Businessmen. We can reach an accommodation. Anthony lied to me—he told me you were ready to step down, that you wanted out of the docks."
On the floor, Anthony jerked his head up, panic flaring behind his bruised face. "Carlo, you bastard! You swore we’d split the city! You told me Vincent had to die!"
"Shut up, you dog!" Carlo spat, kicking Anthony in the ribs with his polished dress shoe.
Anthony groaned, curling into a ball against the ruined marble.
Vincent walked forward, his footsteps deliberate and steady. Every drop of blood dripping from his wounded arm felt like a countdown clock ticking toward dawn. He stopped five feet from Bellandi, towering over the older Don.
"You spoke of honor, Carlo," Vincent said softly. "Was there honor when your men broke Elena Marino’s ribs? Was there honor when Silas Vance chased a six-year-old child through the rain?"
Carlo swallowed hard. "She was Frank Moretti’s blood! A blood debt never dies, Vincent! Your father taught us that rule thirty years ago!"
"My father is dead," Vincent whispered, his gaze piercing through Carlo’s facade. "And his war died with him. You didn't hunt Elena for honor. You hunted her because you’re a vulture feeding on the scraps of an old man's empire. You wanted Terminal B, you wanted my docks, and you thought you could hide behind twenty-five-year-old ghosts to take them."
Carlo’s eyes darted toward the terrace, then down to Anthony, realizing there were no cards left to play. In a final, desperate spasm of pride, Carlo drew his revolver from his waistband.
Vincent didn't draw a gun.
He stepped inside the arc of Carlo’s arm, his left hand clamping down like an iron vise over the cylinder of the revolver, jamming the hammer forward. With his right hand, Vincent drew his father’s vintage stiletto, driving the steel blade clean through the meat of Carlo’s gun hand, pinning the weapon and the flesh together.
Carlo shrieked, falling to his knees as Vincent stripped the gun from his mangled fingers.
Vincent tossed the weapon aside. It clattered into the soot.
"Luca," Vincent said, not breaking eye contact with the groveling Don.
"Boss?"
"Take Carlo to the federal courthouse in the Loop. Hand him over to the U.S. Attorney’s office along with the offshore shipping manifests from the Pier 19 raid."
Carlo looked up through tears of agony, bewildered. "The... the feds? You're giving me to the federals? That’s against the code!"
"You wanted to break the code when you put a hit on an innocent woman and her child," Vincent said with chilling detachment. "A bullet is too clean for you, Carlo. You're going to spend the next thirty years inside a concrete box in Florence, Colorado, watching your family’s name erased from every street corner in this city."
Luca grabbed Carlo by the collar of his suit and hauled him to his feet, marching him out into the courtyard where Torino transport vans were idling.
Then there was only one.
Vincent turned his attention to the man still curled on the floor.
Anthony Rizzo looked up at Vincent through swollen, tearful eyes. The silver hair was scorched with soot, his manicured hands filthy and trembling. He dragged himself across the marble on his elbows, reaching out to grasp the hem of Vincent’s torn coat.
"Vincent... Vincent, please," Anthony wept, the pathetic remnants of a consigliere who had traded his soul for numbers on a screen. "I made a mistake. The greed... it blinded me. Your father would have forgiven me! We were brothers!"
Vincent looked down at the hand clutching his coat—the same hand that had written Recover the ledger. Terminate. on the back of Elena’s photograph.
"My father would have skinned you alive, Anthony," Vincent said, his voice flat, hollow, and absolute. "And you know it."
"Give me exile," Anthony begged, tears carving pale tracks through the soot on his cheeks. "I'll leave the country. I won't ever speak the name Torino again. Please... Vincent, don't do this."
Vincent knelt on one knee. He gently peeled Anthony’s fingers from his coat, setting the man's hand back down onto the cold stone.
"You sat at my father's table for thirty years," Vincent said softly. "You ate his bread. You watched me grow up. And yet, last night, you sent men to murder a child whose only crime was believing someone could be kind."
Vincent drew his Kimber 1911 from its holster.
"You taught me how to shoot, Anthony," Vincent whispered. "You always said a Torino never hesitates when the debt comes due."
Anthony’s eyes widened in sheer, suffocating terror. "Vincent, no—"
Crack.
The single gunshot echoed through the vaulted ceiling of the burning mansion, swallowed instantly by the vast, open silence of the rising sun.
Vincent stood up. He lowered the smoking barrel, sliding the weapon back into its leather holster. He didn't look down at the body.
He turned toward the shattered terrace doors.
Outside, the rain had finally stopped. Across the horizon of Lake Michigan, a pale, pristine stripe of golden light began to pierce the morning clouds, burning away the gray mist.
Vincent walked down the stone steps into the fresh morning air, wiping the soot from his brow with a clean linen handkerchief. He took a deep, clear breath of the dawn, feeling the terrible weight of thirty years finally lifting from his shoulders.
Luca approached from the drive, handing Vincent a fresh satellite phone.
"The lake boat docked in Kenosha ten minutes ago, Boss," Luca said quietly. "Elena, Maria, and the girl are safe at the lakehouse. Dominic is in surgery with Miller; Ronald says he's going to make it."
Vincent took the phone. His thumb grazed the screen, dialing the private number for the Kenosha estate.
The line clicked.
"Vincent?" Elena’s voice was breathless, raw with anxiety, but unmistakably strong.
Vincent closed his eyes against the rising sun, feeling a warmth he hadn't known in his entire life.
"Elena," Vincent said softly. "It’s over."
A long, shuddering sigh of relief travelled across the line, followed by the quiet sound of a woman crying tears that were no longer shed in fear.
"Are you coming?" she asked.
May you like
Vincent looked down at his bloodstained sleeves, then out toward the golden water.
"I have to change my suit first," Vincent smiled, a true, genuine smile touching his lips for the first time in years. "I told you: you still owe me a glass of wine."
