Chapter 8 - Blood on the Hudson
The rain was an absolute deluge, cascading off the corrugated iron roofs of the naval yard like a waterfall.
Lucas slammed the brakes, the armored SUV skidding to a halt thirty yards from the gangplank, its high-beam headlights slicing through the darkness and pinning Victor Romano in a blinding white glare.
The doors flew open. Lucas and Elena stepped out into the storm.
"Mommy!" Lily’s tiny, terrified scream pierced through the thunder and the howling wind. The little girl was drenched, her pink pajamas clinging to her shivering frame, her small face streaked with tears and dirt. "Mommy! Help me!"
"Lily!" Elena screamed, lunging forward, but Lucas caught her by the shoulder, his grip an iron clamp, holding her back from the open line of fire.
"Step back, Elena," Lucas commanded, his voice deadly low.
Victor squinted against the blinding headlights, a hysterical, jagged laugh tearing from his throat. The mask of the sophisticated mafia prince was completely gone; Victor looked like a rabid animal backed into a slaughterhouse chute.
"Stay right there, Lucas!" Victor screamed over the roar of the harbor wind, digging the barrel of the revolver harder into the soft flesh behind Lily’s ear. Lily let out a sharp cry of pain, squeezing her eyes shut. "One step closer and I blow this little rat’s brains into the river! Throw your guns onto the concrete! Both of you!"
Elena was shaking so violently her teeth clicked together, but she kept the Glock pointed steadily at Victor’s chest. "Let her go, Victor! She’s a child! She doesn't know anything!"
"She knows enough to ruin my life!" Victor roared, his eyes wild, bloodshot, and feral. "Three years! Three years I planned this! I gave twenty-five years of my life to the Moretti family! I buried your father’s bodies, Lucas! I took the heat from the feds! And what did I get? You inherited the empire, and your bleeding-heart wife wanted to turn our billion-dollar racket into a goddamn community outreach program!"
Victor spat blood onto the wet pavement.
"I built this kingdom! Not you! Not your father! And I was this close—*this close*—to taking the whole damn board! Until this sick little stray walked down the hall with her damn inhaler!"
Lucas stepped out in front of Elena, putting his massive frame between Victor’s gun and the woman he had sworn to protect. He unholstered his Sig Sauer with deliberate slowness, holding it by the grip with two fingers, and let it fall onto the wet concrete. It clattered against the stone, sliding into a puddle.
"You want me, Victor," Lucas said, his voice terrifyingly calm, cutting straight through the howling storm. "You’ve always wanted me. You hate that my father chose me. You hate that Bella looked through you like a pane of glass. Let the child go. She has nothing to do with this. Take me up that gangplank. Use me as your hostage to clear international waters."
Victor’s eyes twitched. A twisted, mocking grin spread across his face. "You’d trade your life for an orphan in a maid’s uniform, Lucas? How noble. How utterly, predictably pathetic. Just like your father. Just like Bella."
Victor pulled the hammer of the revolver back with a loud, ominous *click*.
"The difference is, Lucas... I’m not leaving witnesses this time. First, I kill the brat. Then I kill the mother. Then I put a bullet through both your kneecaps and watch you drown in the river where your wife’s bones are buried."
"No!" Elena screamed.
Lily, shivering violently in Victor’s grip, looked across the thirty yards of rain at Lucas. Her tiny lips were turning blue from the freezing wind, but through her tears, she saw the man who had sat on the floor with her, the man who had called her a little strawberry.
Lily suddenly looked down at her own hand.
In her small, waterlogged fist, she was still clutching her plastic inhaler.
With a sudden burst of desperate, feral courage that only a child born of survival could possess, Lily did not scream. She swung her little arm around and slammed the hard plastic canister directly into Victor’s wounded shoulder, right where the sniper’s bullet had torn through his flesh at the Plaza.
Victor let out a deafening roar of agony, his grip on her collar slipping.
"Run, Lily!" Elena shrieked.
Lily bit down with all her might on Victor’s gun hand. Victor screamed, instinctively pulling his hand back and backhanding the child across the face.
The force of the blow knocked Lily off the edge of the wooden pier.
"LILY!" Elena screamed, diving forward onto the rain-slicked concrete.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl.
Lucas didn't hesitate. He didn't reach for his gun. He hurled his entire body forward across the wet asphalt like a missile, sliding on his knees across the wooden planks, his outstretched arm plunging into the freezing, churning black void of the harbor just as Lily’s pink pajamas vanished beneath the waves.
His fingers caught the hem of her jacket.
His shoulder dislocated with a sickening *pop* as the dead weight of the water and the child yanked violently against his arm, but Lucas did not let go. He roared in agony, his teeth bared against the storm, and with a monstrous heave of pure, adrenaline-fueled strength, he hauled the sputtering, coughing child out of the dark water and threw her onto the pier behind him.
Elena was there instantly, scooping Lily into her arms, covering the shivering girl with her own body.
On the gangplank above, Victor Romano recovered his balance, his revolver leveled straight at the back of Lucas’s head.
"Die, Moretti," Victor snarled, his finger squeezing the trigger.
*BANG.*
The shot echoed over the harbor.
Victor Romano froze. A look of total, incomprehensible shock crossed his face.
He looked down at his own chest.
A neat, round hole was smoking in the center of his bespoke tuxedo shirt, right over his heart. Then another. And another.
Behind Lucas, kneeling in the rain with tears streaming down her soot-streaked face, was Elena. Her hands were locked around the grip of the Glock, the slide locked back, smoke curling from the hot barrel.
"That was for Isabella," Elena whispered, her voice steady and lethal.
Victor stumbled backward, his revolver slipping from his lifeless fingers and splashing into the dark harbor below. He hit the gangplank railing, his dead eyes staring up into the stormy sky, before his body tipped over the edge, plunging into the black, unforgiving depths of the East River, swallowed by the cold current.
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the sound of the falling rain and the jagged, sobbing breaths of a little girl clutching her mother’s chest.
Lucas rolled onto his back, his dislocated shoulder screaming with white-hot pain, his lungs burning from the exertion. Rain washed the blood and sweat from his face.
Elena scrambled over to him, Lily tucked securely under one arm, and dropped to her knees beside him. She reached out with a trembling hand, pressing her palm against his cold, wet cheek.
"Lucas," she sobbed, her hazel eyes searching his face. "Lucas, look at me. Are you okay?"
Lucas looked up at her through the rain. Then he looked at Lily, who was sniffling, her small arms wrapping around Lucas’s uninjured wrist, her chest heaving as she held out her cracked, salt-soaked inhaler.
"Mister," Lily whispered, her small voice trembling with the sweetest, most pure innocence on earth. "Did we win?"
A ragged, breathless laugh broke from Lucas Moretti’s chest—the first genuine sound of joy he had produced in three long years. He reached up with his good arm, wrapping it around both Elena and the little girl, pulling them down against his chest on the rain-soaked pier.
May you like
"Yes, little strawberry," Lucas whispered, closing his eyes as the warmth of their embrace chased away the ghosts of the past. "We won. It's over."
***