Chapter 24 - The Lion's Trap
Dante knelt down in front of Maria. His large, scarred hand gently took her trembling fingers and pulled her to her feet. The cold fury on his face had been replaced by something far more dangerous: a Don with a sacred duty.
“You kept my brother’s child alive,” Dante whispered, his voice thick with an intensity that made Maria gasp. “For three years, you scrubbed my floors, washed my linen, and kept Leo’s blood safe under my own roof while I was blind.”
“I... I was terrified you would think she was a threat to your seat, Don Dante,” Maria sobbed.
“I would burn this entire city to the ground before I let anyone harm Leo’s daughter,” Dante said. “You are no longer a servant in this house, Maria. You are family. And anyone who comes for Elena will have to wade through a mountain of my enemies.”
He stood up and pulled out his phone, dialing Mateo.
“Boss?” Mateo answered instantly.
“Call the captains. All twelve of them. Tell them to bring every soldier, every rifle, and every drop of ammunition they have to the estate. We are going to war with Europe.”
“Boss, are you sure? The families just settled—”
“Now, Mateo!” Dante roared.
Twenty minutes later, the grand parlor was filled with the captains of the Moretti syndicate. Men with weathered faces, scarred knuckles, and eyes that had seen decades of street warfare. Maps of New York Harbor, JFK Airport, and the private airfields of Long Island were spread across the mahogany table.
“Julian Vance doesn’t want Elena dead,” Dante explained to his commanders, pointing a silver pen at the map. “He wants her alive. As the sole surviving child of Sophia Vance, Elena holds the legal key to the European trust funds locked in Zurich—funds worth over twenty billion euros. With Elena under his thumb, Julian can declare total sovereignty over both the European families and the American ports.”
“So he’s coming here with an army?” asked Marco, the grizzled captain of the Brooklyn docks.
“No,” Dante said, his lips curling into a predatory smile. “He thinks I’m a savage American who will panic. He thinks I’ll try to smuggle her out of the country via private jet. He’s waiting for me to run.”
“What do we do, Don?” Marco asked, leaning forward.
“We don’t run,” Dante declared, slamming his palm onto the table. “We give him the bait.”
Just then, the glass doors leading to the courtyard shattered with a deafening crash.
Flashbang grenades rolled across the marble floor, releasing blinding bursts of white light and earsplitting concussions. High-caliber sniper rounds punched through the heavy draperies, splintering the mahogany furniture into jagged toothpicks.
“Ambush!” Mateo yelled, diving across the table to shield Dante. “Down! Get down!”
Black-clad mercenaries wearing night-vision goggles and silenced submachine guns breached the perimeter, moving with the terrifying precision of European special forces.
The Architects were not waiting seventy-two hours.
May you like
They had already arrived.
***
