Chapter 14 - THE VIPER'S NEST
Z
Chaos erupted in the dining room. Chairs scraped violently against the hardwood as the capos scrambled to their feet, reaching for weapons they had been politely asked to leave at the door. Sal Maroni threw his hands in the air, his face a mask of terrified, fabricated outrage.
"Are you insane?!" Sal bellowed, pointing a trembling finger at me. "Vincent, control your goddamn dog! She’s pointing a gun at a made man! This is a violation of the code!"
"The code went out the window when you texted New York the coordinates to the estate, Sal," I fired back, keeping the sights of my Glock perfectly aligned with his heart. "Midnight. Power grid goes down. Extraction out the back. Do you want me to read the rest of the text, or do you want to start confessing before I blow a hole in your chest?"
The room went deathly still. All eyes turned to Vincent. He sat at the head of the table, perfectly motionless, his face an impenetrable mask of dark, terrifying fury. He didn't look at Sal. He looked at me, calculating the weight of my words, trusting the instincts of the woman who had already saved his life twice.
"Check his coat," Vincent ordered softly to the heavily armed guard standing by the door.
"Vincent, you can't be serious!" Sal panicked, taking a step backward, sweat beading on his forehead. "You're going to take the word of a cartel stray over a man who bled for your father?"
The guard returned seconds later, holding the cheap, plastic burner phone. He handed it to Vincent. Vincent didn't even look at the screen. He just placed it gently on the table next to his wine glass. The soft clack of the plastic hitting the wood sounded like a gunshot in the silent room.
"My father is dead, Sal," Vincent whispered, standing up slowly, his imposing frame dominating the room. "And it seems you’re in a rush to join him."
Vincent didn't yell. He didn't rant. He simply drew his .45 and shot Sal Maroni squarely in the kneecap.
Sal shrieked, collapsing to the floor in a heap of tailored wool and shattering china, clutching his bleeding leg. The other capos recoiled in absolute horror, realizing the true depth of Vincent's ruthlessness. There would be no trial. There would be no mercy.
"We have twelve minutes," I said, my voice cutting through Sal's agonizing screams. "They’re going to hit the main breaker, blind the cameras, and breach the perimeter. They think we’re sitting ducks."
Vincent looked down at the weeping, bleeding traitor on the floor, then turned his gaze to the rest of his men. The air crackled with a terrifying authority. "Arm up. Every man in this room fights tonight, or they die tonight. We don't defend the house. We let them breach the main doors, and we trap them in the foyer in a crossfire. They want a bloodbath? We drown them in it."
The men scattered, the sheer gravity of survival overriding their shock. I moved to Vincent's side as he calmly reloaded his weapon.
"You found the leak," Vincent murmured, his eyes locking onto mine with a fierce, burning pride. "You just saved my empire again, Micah."
"Let's make sure we survive the next ten minutes before you start handing out medals, Boss," I replied, chambering a round in my Glock.
We moved to the grand foyer, taking strategic positions behind the massive marble pillars and the sweeping, curved staircases. The estate guards killed the interior lights early, plunging the mansion into an eerie, suffocating darkness, lit only by the sporadic flashes of lightning from the storm outside.
We waited in absolute silence. The tension was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest. I could hear the rain lashing against the massive stained-glass windows, masking the sounds of the approaching strike team.
At exactly midnight, the dull thud of a suppressed explosive charge echoed from the main gates. A second later, the backup generators kicked in, but someone had already severed the main lines. The cameras were dead. We were flying blind.
"Hold your fire until they are entirely inside," Vincent’s voice ghosted through the darkness from the opposite balcony. "Nobody shoots until I do."
Heavy, tactical boots crunched on the gravel outside. The massive double oak doors of the estate groaned, then shattered inward as a heavy breaching ram smashed the locks to splinters. A dozen men in full tactical gear, wearing night-vision goggles and carrying suppressed assault rifles, flooded into the grand foyer, moving with the deadly precision of a military hit squad.
They thought they were stepping into an ambush. They didn't realize they were stepping into an execution chamber.
The moment the last man crossed the threshold, Vincent stood up from behind the marble balcony railing and fired. His .45 roared in the confined space, a deafening explosion of light and sound that shattered the darkness. His bullet caught the point man directly in the throat, sending him crashing backward.
"Now!" Vincent bellowed.
The foyer erupted into an absolute apocalypse of gunfire. I leaned out from behind a heavy Roman statue, the muzzle flashes of my twin pistols illuminating the terrifying chaos. I aimed for the center mass, exploiting the momentary blindness caused by the sudden muzzle flashes overloading their night-vision optics. Two mercenaries dropped, their armor failing to stop the close-range, armor-piercing rounds I had loaded.
The New York squad tried to retreat, but the sheer volume of suppressing fire from Vincent’s capos pinned them in the center of the kill zone. It was a massacre. Wood splintered, marble shattered, and the smell of cordite and copper filled the air.
Within sixty agonizing, deafening seconds, it was over.
Silence rushed back into the room, broken only by the groans of dying men and the ringing in our ears. The backup emergency lights flickered on, casting a sickly, yellow glow over the carnage. Twelve elite New York mercenaries lay dead or dying on the shattered marble floor of the Costanza estate.
I stepped out from behind the pillar, my guns still raised, my breath coming in ragged gasps. Vincent descended the grand staircase, his face entirely unreadable as he surveyed the slaughter.
May you like
He walked over to the leader of the strike team, a man gasping for air through a chest wound, and casually kicked the rifle away from his dying hands.
"Tell Don Lupertazzi," Vincent whispered to the dying man, "that Boston is closed for business."
