Chapter 7 - A Father's Breaking Point and the Blood on the Wall
Before Victor’s convoy could reach the farmhouse driveway, the lead BearCat came to an abrupt, violent halt.
"Victor! Look up ahead!" Marco yelled through the radio headset from the driver's seat.
Fifty yards ahead of them, blocking the narrow country bridge that crossed the frozen creek leading to the farmhouse, sat three black Chevrolet Suburbans with heavily tinted windows and heavy steel brush guards.
Men in tactical winter gear were already deploying from the vehicles, armed with automatic carbines.
Victor stepped up between the front seats of the BearCat, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "Those aren't state police."
"No," Marco said, his voice tightening as he racked the bolt of an assault rifle. "That's the Moretti crew. Dominic Moretti’s men."
Dominic Moretti. Chicago’s most ruthless logistics and docks operator. A man Victor had stripped of three multi-million-dollar shipping contracts in the Port of Chicago two months ago. Moretti had been looking for leverage against Victor for years.
"They intercepted our communications," Victor realized, his blood running cold. "When I put out the alert to the state police about an abduction, Moretti’s contacts in the Cook County dispatch heard the name Nora Rinaldi. They tracked our convoy out of Kenosha."
Moretti didn't know Nora had run away. Moretti thought Victor’s wife had been kidnapped by a third party, and he had moved his strike team to intercept her first—to take Victor Rinaldi’s wife and newborn heirs as ultimate bargaining chips.
"Sir, they are moving toward the farmhouse!" an operative shouted.
Victor did not hesitate for a single microsecond. The cold, calculated billionaire vanished, replaced entirely by an apex predator protecting his blood.
"Kill them all," Victor said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "Leave no one standing between me and that house."
The silence of the snowy Wisconsin valley exploded into violence.
The BearCat’s heavy doors swung open. Victor’s private security forces poured out into the knee-deep snow, returning fire with lethal, military precision. The sharp, deafening cracks of rifle fire echoed across the frozen fields, shattering the peaceful silence of the countryside.
Victor moved forward without hesitation, advancing through the whiteout behind the armored shield of the BearCat. When a Moretti gunman rounded the side of an overturned tractor, raising an MP5 toward the lead transport, Victor raised his custom semi-automatic sidearm and fired three controlled shots through the falling snow.
The gunman dropped instantly into the red-stained drift.
Another Moretti operative tried to flank through the treeline toward the farmhouse porch. Victor sprinted through the deep snow, ignoring the freezing wind tearing at his face, intercepted the man behind the barn, and tackled him hard into the ice.
They rolled in the snow. The operative swung a combat knife; Victor caught his wrist, twisted the joint until the bone snapped with a sickening crunch, disarmed him, and drove his elbow down into the man’s throat with devastating force.
The gunman went limp.
Victor stood up, his breath coming in ragged, white plumes of steam. Gunfire was dying down behind him as Marco’s heavily armed team overwhelmed Moretti’s men, disarming the survivors and securing the perimeter.
Victor wiped the snow and blood from his cheek.
He didn't look back at the bodies in the snow. He turned his eyes toward the small, humble farmhouse porch thirty yards away.
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Standing on the porch, holding a double-barreled twelve-gauge hunting shotgun aimed directly at Victor’s chest, was Caleb.
And behind the screen door, clutching both twins tightly against her chest in a double sling, her face pale with terror and defiance, stood Nora.
