Chapter 3 - The Watchers in the Pines
“Get down on the floor,” Lorenzo commanded, his voice dropping into the chilled, rhythmic cadence of combat. “Both of you. Behind the cast-iron stove. Now.”
Elena didn't hesitate. Six years of survival instincts kicked in instantly. She grabbed Sophie by the elbow and pulled her behind the kitchen partition, pressing the girl flat against the floorboards beneath the woodstove. Sophie didn't cry. Her eyes were wide, her little fingers digging into her mother’s sweater, her jaw clamped shut just the way Matteo used to take a beating before he learned how to throw a counter-punch.
Lorenzo reached into his coat and produced the Kimber .45. With a quiet, oily *snick*, he racked the slide, chambering a hollow-point round, and flipped the thumb safety off.
He pulled his phone from his trousers with his left hand, entered an encrypted four-digit PIN, and hit speed-dial one.
It rang once.
“Boss,” a gravelly voice answered from three hours south. It was Marco, Lorenzo’s head of security and the only man alive whose loyalty had been tested in the fires of the Jersey docks.
“Marco. Listen to me very carefully,” Lorenzo said, his voice a flat, dead whisper as he kept his eyes pinned to the blue SUV through the crack in the doorframe. “Silvio is a traitor. He orchestrates the hits on Matteo and Elena six years ago. He faked Elena’s death and has been running a shadow crew right under our noses.”
On the other end of the line, Marco’s breath caught, but the professional soldier didn't waste time asking questions. “Say the word, Boss. His penthouse in Hoboken is surrounded in fifteen minutes.”
“No,” Lorenzo ordered. “If you move on him now, his lieutenants scatter and we lose the network. Freeze his accounts. Cut the private communications from the estate. And mobilize the heavy transport. I’m at 47 Cedar Lane in Maple Ridge. Paulie Varga is sitting across the street in a blue Suburban with a scout team.”
“Maple Ridge? That’s two hours north of the perimeter! We can't have an extraction unit there before midnight!”
“Then I’ll handle it myself,” Lorenzo said. “Get the black bird in the air. Have the armored Suburban and four men at the secondary airfield in Kingston. If I’m not there by two in the morning, burn everything Silvio owns to the foundation.”
Lorenzo hung up without waiting for a reply.
He pocketed the phone and looked back toward the SUV.
The passenger door of the Suburban opened. Paulie Varga stepped out into the swirling snow. He was a squat, bull-necked enforcer who had earned his nickname by using a hay hook to clear rival dockworkers in the nineties. He wore a heavy leather bomber jacket and was adjusting a suppressed MAC-10 machine pistol beneath his arm. Behind him, the rear doors clicked open, and two more men emerged—younger, leaner street soldiers carrying heavy canvas tool bags.
They weren't here to question Elena. They were here to clean up a loose end that Silvio had just realized was unravelling.
*The grocery clerk,* Lorenzo realized with cold fury. *The clerk saw me hand the money over. The clerk knows everybody in this town. Silvio keeps ears in every small town within two hundred miles of the city.*
Lorenzo moved back to the kitchen partition. He knelt beside Elena and Sophie.
“Elena, is there a back door?”
“A cellar hatch,” she whispered, her teeth chattering so hard the words could barely escape. “Behind the pantry. It leads to the old coal chute in the alleyway. But Lorenzo... my hip. I can't run. The pins they put in after the crash... I can barely walk down the steps.”
Lorenzo looked at the woman who had loved his brother. He looked at the girl who had his brother’s eyes.
“You’re done running, Elena,” Lorenzo said gently. He reached out with his free hand and smoothed Sophie’s dark curls. “Nobody runs anymore. Not you. Not Sophie. I’m the head of the Duca family, and my family stays together.”
He unbuttoned his heavy coat, slipped it off, and wrapped it around Sophie, bundling her small frame inside the cashmere-lined wool. He reached into the deep inner pocket, pulled out a thick roll of hundred-dollar bills, and shoved it into the pocket of her little gray sweater.
“Sophie,” he said, looking straight into her brown eyes. “You trust me?”
She looked at the gun in his hand, then up into his weathered face. She nodded once. “Yes.”
“When I go out that door, you and your mom go into the pantry. You pull the bolt on the floor hatch, and you wait. If someone comes down those stairs who isn't me, you push your mom out the coal chute, you run to the bakery on the corner, and you scream for the police. You understand?”
“Lorenzo, no!” Elena wept, grabbing his forearm. Her grip was surprisingly strong. “They’ll kill you! There are three of them!”
Lorenzo gave her a thin, terrifying smile that belonged entirely to the streets of Brooklyn.
“Three isn't enough, Elena,” he said. “They should have brought an army.”
He stood, stepped to the front window, and raised the Kimber .45.
Outside, Paulie Varga was twenty feet from the front porch, boots crunching through the fresh snow, his gloved hand reaching for the porch rail.
Lorenzo didn't wait for them to knock.
May you like
He leveled the Kimber through the lower pane of the living room window, aimed dead center at the chest of the lead scout behind Paulie, and squeezed the trigger.
***
