Chapter 11 - THE PHANTOM STRIKE
Z
Massimo’s reaction to the FBI cornering me was nothing short of apocalyptic. Within an hour of my phone call, the estate was locked down so tightly it felt like a military fortress. He had pulled me out of my clinical rotations indefinitely, citing "security concerns," which led to our first massive, screaming argument since the night we met.
"I am not a porcelain doll you can lock in a vault!" I had yelled at him in his study, hurling a medical textbook onto his desk. "I worked too hard for this degree to hide in your mansion while you play war!"
"You will stay where I can see you!" he had roared back, slamming his fist onto the mahogany so hard the wood cracked. "Harris doesn't want justice, Tessa. He wants leverage. He’ll lock you in a federal holding cell and leak your location to New York just to see if I come tear the prison apart to get you!"
The terrifying part was that Massimo was right. So, I stayed. But the tension in the house was suffocating.
Three days later, Massimo was forced to attend a sit-down with a proxy sent by the New York Commission. It was to be held at L’Eclisse, an ultra-exclusive Italian restaurant in the North End that Massimo quietly owned. It was neutral ground, supposedly.
I refused to stay behind. "If they know I'm your weakness," I told him, adjusting his black silk tie in the mirror of our bedroom, "then hiding me proves them right. You bring me. You show them I'm not a liability; I'm your Queen."
Massimo had stared at me for a long time, his dark eyes ablaze with a mixture of terror and overwhelming pride. "You wear Kevlar under the dress," he had ordered. I didn't argue.
Now, I was sitting at a candlelit table covered in white linen and crystal glasses, wearing a breathtaking backless emerald gown—and a highly classified, ultra-thin ballistic vest beneath it. Across from us sat Don Carmine’s proxy, a slick, oily man named Salvi. Salvi was accompanied by four hulking guards who looked like they chewed gravel for breakfast. Massimo had Lorenzo and six of his best shooters stationed around the dining room.
The restaurant was completely empty save for our party. The silence was heavy, broken only by the clinking of silverware.
"The Commission is reasonable, Massimo," Salvi said, taking a delicate sip of his water. He hadn't touched his food. "They acknowledge your... forceful acquisition of Vincenzo's assets. But the port routes belong to the syndicate. You pay a thirty percent tax, and you keep your crown. A fair price for peace."
"Thirty percent is extortion," Massimo replied smoothly, slicing his steak with surgical precision. "My uncle was weak, so he paid it. I am not my uncle. I control the docks, the unions, and the shipping lanes. The Commission gets ten percent, as a gesture of goodwill. Not a penny more."
Salvi’s smile was thin and reptilian. His eyes flicked to me. "And what does the lovely doctor think? I hear you prefer stitching wounds to creating them, Miss Fitzgerald. Surely you want to avoid a war that might... ruin your pretty hands."
My grip on my wine glass tightened, but I didn't flinch. "I think," I said, my voice perfectly level, "that a misdiagnosed tumor can kill a patient just as easily as a bullet. If New York wants to act like a cancer in Boston, they’ll find our surgical removal methods extremely effective."
Massimo’s lips twitched in a shadow of a smile. Salvi’s face hardened.
Just then, the head sommelier approached the table. He was a distinguished older man, carrying a dust-covered bottle of 1990 Barolo. "For the Capo," he murmured, his hands shaking slightly as he began to uncork the bottle.
I watched the sommelier. My medical training was second nature, an automatic scan of the human body’s physiological responses. I noticed the sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the cool climate control of the restaurant. I noticed the fine tremor in his fingers. But what caught my full attention were his eyes. As he poured the deep red wine into Massimo's glass, I saw his pupils were dilated to the size of saucers.
Fight or flight response. Massive adrenaline dump. Sympathetic nervous system overload.
He was terrified. But not of Massimo. He was terrified of what he was doing.
Massimo reached for the glass. Salvi watched him, a faint, anticipating gleam in his oily eyes.
"Wait," I said sharply.
Massimo froze, his fingers inches from the crystal stem. He looked at me, instantly reading the alarm in my eyes.
I looked at the sommelier. "You're tachycardic," I stated, my voice echoing in the silent room. "Your hands are shaking, and you’re diaphoresis. Did someone threaten your family, or did they just pay you enough to risk your life?"
The sommelier went ghost white. He dropped the bottle. The glass shattered against the marble floor, a pool of red bleeding across the white tiles like a crime scene.
"Gun!" Lorenzo roared.
Before the bottle even finished breaking, the sommelier reached into his tuxedo jacket, pulling a suppressed pistol. But Massimo was faster. He didn't even draw his weapon. He grabbed his steak knife and drove it violently across the table, burying it to the hilt in the sommelier's shoulder.
The man screamed, the gun firing wildly into the ceiling.
Chaos erupted. Salvi’s men drew their weapons, but Lorenzo and Massimo’s guards opened fire first. The deafening roar of gunfire shattered the elegant atmosphere. Massimo grabbed me by the waist, throwing us both to the floor, flipping the heavy oak dining table over to act as a barricade. Bullets chewed through the wood, raining splinters over my hair.
"Lorenzo, the back exit!" Massimo shouted over the gunfire, pulling his Glock from his shoulder holster.
"Salvi is down! Two shooters left!" Lorenzo yelled back, returning fire from behind a marble pillar.
I pressed my hands over my ears, the noise agonizing, but my mind was terrifyingly clear. They hadn't come to negotiate. The thirty percent tax was a distraction. They had come to assassinate Massimo with a poisoned vintage, and when I ruined it, they reverted to plan B.
Massimo leaned over me, his face inches from mine, his eyes wild with adrenaline and rage. "Are you hit?"
"No!" I yelled over a shotgun blast.
May you like
He kissed my forehead, a frantic, aggressive stamp of ownership. "Stay down, Tessa. I’m going to end this."
He rolled out from behind the table, firing three rapid shots. The return fire ceased immediately. The restaurant fell into a ringing, smoke-filled silence, broken only by the groans of the dying. The phantom strike had failed, but the real war had just begun.
