Chapter 9 - THE POISONED COMMUNION
The cold-storage warehouse smelled of dry ammonia, rotting wood, and sixty years of frozen fish.
The air inside was colder than the storm outside.
Our breath plumed in thick, white clouds under the dim amber emergency lights hanging from the vaulted iron rafters.
Massive overhead hooks on automated conveyor tracks hung like rows of rusted scythes.
Dante walked five paces ahead of me.
His shotgun was pressed tight to his shoulder, the barrel sweeping every dark corner between the wooden shipping crates.
My fingers were numb around the grip of the Sig Sauer.
My wet sneakers squeaked on the frosty concrete floor.
Every hair on the back of my neck was standing on end.
"Dante," I whispered.
"Look at the floor."
Beside a row of rusted brine tanks lay a trail of dark, sticky droplets.
Fresh blood.
Not ours.
A heavy, dragging footprint followed the trail toward the center of the warehouse.
The brass anchor I had thrown at Lucian in the bedroom had done damage.
He was limping.
We rounded a towering mountain of wooden pallets.
In the center of the concrete floor stood a massive circular bank vault door, twelve feet in diameter, set directly into the natural bedrock of the Brooklyn shoreline.
Built in 1928.
The steel was four inches thick, carved with the roaring lion of the Moretti coat of arms.
Standing before the vault door was Lucian.
He had stripped off his tactical coat.
His ruined face was covered in a makeshift bandage made from a torn flannel shirt, blood soaking through the cloth over his left eye.
In his right hand, he held a cutting torch connected to twin tanks of oxygen and acetylene.
The blue flame hissed with a high-pitched, angry scream, licking against the heavy brass combination dial of the vault.
He had barely scratched the surface.
The alloy was reinforced with manganese steel—impervious to heat.
Lucian heard our boots on the frost.
He clicked off the torch.
The flame died with a loud pop.
The sudden silence in the warehouse was absolute, broken only by the distant hum of the Brooklyn Bridge above us.
Lucian slowly turned around.
He didn't raise a gun.
He leaned his weight against the iron vault wheel, gasping for breath, his good eye bloodshot and wild.
"You're late, brother," Lucian wheezed.
His voice was like two bricks grinding together.
"The torch doesn't work, Lucian," Dante said, stepping into the center of the light.
His shotgun didn't waver from Lucian's chest.
"The dial is lined with copper-beryllium."
"You could burn it for three days and you wouldn't melt the locking pins."
Lucian let out a wet, rattling laugh.
"I don't need to melt it anymore, Dante."
"You brought the key to me."
Lucian looked past Dante’s shoulder.
His milky, blinded eye stared straight at my throat.
At the silver St. Jude medallion hanging against my chest.
"Hello, sister-in-law," Lucian sneered.
"You took a piece of my skull off with that anchor."
"I should have used a crowbar," I said, stepping up beside Dante.
I didn't cower behind him.
I raised the silver Sig Sauer with both hands, centering the front sight directly between Lucian's eyes.
Lucian chuckled, coughing up dark phlegm onto the concrete.
"Look at the little baker's wife."
"Playing soldier with the big boys."
"Tell her the truth, Dante."
"Tell her why Miguel had the code in the first place."
Dante didn't answer.
His jaw was set like a block of iron.
"Miguel didn't steal that vault code, Elena," Lucian rasped, his face twisting with bitter venom.
"Our father gave it to him on his deathbed."
"Our father looked past me."
"He looked past Dante."
"He chose the baker."
"He chose the boy who didn't want the crown."
Lucian reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a small glass vial filled with a dark, oily liquid.
He held it up between two trembling fingers.
"Do you know what this is, Elena?"
My skin prickled with ice.
"Arsenic," I whispered.
"The exact same batch our uncle Carmine used on your mother fourteen years ago," Lucian said.
"And the exact same batch I slipped into Miguel's coffee three minutes before the shooters arrived outside that bakery."
A scream tore from my throat.
Not of grief.
May you like
Of pure, unadulterated fury.
I squeezed the trigger.
