Chapter 8 - THE WOLF OF CHICAGO
Dominic didn't climb down the stairs.
He kicked the emergency iron door wide open.
The loud metallic crash echoed off the corrugated rafters like thunder.
Every gun in the concrete pit swung upward in an instant.
"Moretti!" Dominic’s voice boomed through the warehouse.
He stood on the catwalk railing, eighty feet above the concrete floor.
His dark wool coat billowed behind him in the draft.
He looked down at thirty armed men like a king looking at stray dogs.
"You wanted the Castellano family?" Dominic yelled.
"Here I am."
Victor Moretti rose from his leather sofa, a wide, yellow-toothed grin spreading across his face.
"Dominic," Victor purred into the megaphone.
"You always did know how to make an entrance."
"Where is the beast?"
I stepped out onto the catwalk beside Dominic.
Zeus stood at my left side.
His hackles were flat.
His breathing was completely silent.
He wasn't shaking anymore.
He had smelled his old torturer, and the fear had turned into pure, crystalline rage.
The two Presa Canarios at the bottom of the pit stopped barking.
They backed away from the scent in the air, their tails tucking between their muscular hams.
They recognized the Iron King.
Matteo’s jaw dropped.
"He survived the gas," Matteo muttered, backing toward the shadow of a locomotive.
"You're getting old, Victor," Dominic mocked, stepping onto the iron spiral staircase.
He walked down into the pit with his hands visible at his sides.
Unarmed.
Completely exposed.
"You hired my father's driver to poison my basement," Dominic said, descending step by step.
"You sent fifteen men to die on my dining room floor."
"And you brought thirty soldiers to fight one dog and a server."
"Is this the best the Moretti family can muster?"
Victor’s smile curdled into an ugly snarl.
"Shoot him!" Victor roared, pointing his cigar at Dominic.
"Kill him now!"
Before a single trigger could be pulled, a high-velocity sniper round smashed through the warehouse skylight.
Glass rained down like diamonds.
The mercenary standing to Victor's left dropped to the concrete, a neat red hole drilled through his forehead.
Luca.
From the water tower across the tracks.
Secondary gunfire erupted from the lower rail doors.
Frankie’s assault team breached the building with automatic shotguns, sweeping the perimeter with deafening concussive bursts.
"Zeus, go!" I shouted from the catwalk.
I didn't need to point.
Zeus vaulted over the railing.
A hundred pounds of solid muscle dropped twenty feet onto the roof of an old caboose, then leaped down into the pit.
He moved with the terrifying speed of a silver bullet.
The two Presa Canarios lunged forward to defend their master.
Zeus didn't fight them.
He knew pack dynamics.
He hit the lead dog with his chest at forty miles an hour, flipping the ninety-pound animal onto its spine.
He stood over it, teeth bared, letting out a roar that shook the concrete walls.
The second dog took one look at Zeus’s scarred face and bolted for the dark service tunnels.
Victor scrambled backward toward his leather sofa, drawing a gold-plated desert eagle.
Dominic was already there.
Dominic didn't shoot.
He grabbed Victor’s wrist, twisted the heavy weapon from his grip with a sickening crack of bone, and drove his elbow straight into Victor’s nose.
Cartilage shattered.
Victor screamed, collapsing back onto the sofa, blood spraying over his fur coat.
Matteo lunged from behind the locomotive, raising an assault rifle to shoot Dominic in the back.
"Dominic!" I screamed.
I pulled the Glock from my wool sweater.
My hands didn't shake.
I remembered what Dominic had told me: Keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to destroy whatever is in front of you.
I aimed down the barrel at Matteo's shoulder.
I pulled the trigger.
Crack.
The recoil kicked my palms upward.
The round struck Matteo squarely in the collarbone, spinning him around.
His rifle clattered across the grease-slicked concrete.
Zeus was on him a heartbeat later.
The dog pinned Matteo to the floor, his front paws planted on the traitor's chest, his dripping fangs hovering two inches from Matteo's throat.
Matteo wept, hands raised in the dirt.
"Call them off!" Matteo shrieked. "Call the dog off!"
The gunfire began to die down around the warehouse.
Frankie’s soldiers had surrounded the surviving mercenaries, disarming them with brutal efficiency.
Luca sprinted into the pit, cutting the ropes that bound his sister Sofia to the iron post.
The girl collapsed into her brother's arms, sobbing uncontrollably.
I hurried down the spiral stairs, my legs shaking like jelly.
I reached the bottom of the pit.
Dominic stood over Victor Moretti.
His white dress shirt was smeared with grease and blood.
His hair was tousled, his chest heaving with exertion.
He looked at me.
He saw the smoking Glock in my hand.
He saw that I hadn't hesitated.
A slow, breathtaking smile broke across his severe face.
"Remind me never to under-tip you, Nora," Dominic murmured.
I let out a ragged, half-hysterical laugh and lowered the weapon.
"What about the shelter?" I gasped, the terror returning in an instant.
Dominic pulled out his radio and tossed it to me.
"Channel one."
I pressed the button with trembling fingers.
"Hope Haven, report!" I shouted into the mic.
A voice answered through the static:
"This is Castellano Strike Team Two at 47th Street."
"The perimeter is clean, ma'am."
"Four hostiles neutralized before they could light the fuel."
"Every animal is safe."
"The puppies are currently sleeping, Miss Nora."
The radio slipped from my fingers.
My knees gave out.
I didn't hit the greasy concrete.
Dominic caught me in his arms.
He pulled me against his chest, lifting me effortlessly off my feet.
He was warm.
Solid.
Real.
"I told you," Dominic whispered into my hair.
"Nobody touches what belongs to you."
Zeus padded over, his tail wagging in slow, heavy thumps against the floor.
He rested his massive chin against Dominic’s knee.
Then, from the floor beneath the sofa, Victor Moretti coughed up a mouthful of dark red blood.
He looked up at Dominic with a dying, venomous glare.
"You think this is over, Castellano?" Victor wheezed, his fingers trembling in his pocket.
"The Commission... the Five Families..."
"They won't let you keep that drive."
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"They're already at the Lake Forest estate."
"They took your mother."
