Chapter 8 - The Ambush at the Docks
"Did you really think you could slaughter my brother Arthur and crawl away like a rat in the dark, Luca?" Salvatore sneered, the microphone distorting his vicious chuckle. "My men cut through your perimeter guards like butter! Marco and Matteo are pinned down in the burning ruins of your grand estate!"
Luca stood tall behind the helm, his face carved of absolute ice. He didn't flinch beneath the blinding glare of the spotlight. He didn't even draw his weapon. He simply stood there, radiating an aura of total, terrifying dominance.
"Salvatore," Luca's voice projected clearly across the water, amplified by the natural acoustics of the concrete boathouse. "You brought twenty men into my home to die for a pair of traitors who tried to kill a four-year-old girl."
"I don't give a damn about the girl!" Salvatore roared back. "The Bellini family built half the shipping empire in this city! Arthur gave you his eldest daughter, and when she wasn't good enough, Vanessa gave you her loyalty! And you discarded them like street trash for this orphan housemaid!"
"Vanessa murdered Maria," Luca said, his voice dropping into a deadly, unforgiving register. "Arthur confessed on the ballroom floor in front of fifty witnesses. There is no honor in your bloodline, Salvatore. Only cowardice and greed."
"Kill them all!" Salvatore shrieked, waving his hand toward the boat. "Sink the vessel! Leave nobody breathing!"
The four mercenaries raised their rifles.
"Hold on to something!" Luca roared, slamming his hand down onto a hidden toggle switch on the dashboard.
Instead of the boat engines roaring to life, a deafening series of concussive thuds echoed along the concrete bluffs.
Luca had not simply stored a boat in this boathouse; he had wired the entire cliffside approach with remote-detonated claymore mines.
A wall of fire and steel ball bearings erupted directly beneath the mercenary platform. The spotlight exploded in a flash of sparks. Salvatore’s men were hurled backward into the darkness by the sheer force of the blast.
The platform splintered and collapsed, sending concrete rubble crashing down into the water just yards from the boat's stern.
Luca immediately hit the dual ignition switches. The twin 500-horsepower engines roared to life with an aggressive, thundering growl. He engaged the throttle, and the midnight-black vessel surged forward, smashing through the wooden boathouse gates in an explosion of splintered timber and frothing white foam.
We burst into the open, turbulent waters of Lake Michigan. High above us on the bluffs, the grand Moretti estate was ablaze, smoke billowing up into the stormy night sky.
I stood beside Luca at the console, gripping the stainless steel grab bar as freezing spray whipped across our faces.
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"Salvatore didn't fall," Luca shouted over the roar of the engines, his eyes locked on the shoreline. "He survived the blast. He's heading for the secondary dock."
As if on cue, the high-pitched whine of two jet-black attack boats echoed across the waves behind us, their halogen running lights cutting through the darkness. Salvatore Bellini was in hot pursuit.