Chapter 15 - The Final Ascent
With Isabella safely secured behind Vince’s protective cover and armed with a backup sidearm retrieved from one of the neutralized guards, Dominic rolled back up the subterranean stairwell with a singular, terrifying purpose. The element of surprise was gone now; the muffled sounds of the ground-floor skirmish had undoubtedly drifted up to Victor’s upper-level sanctum. But Dominic Moretti did not care about stealth anymore. He wanted his uncle to see him coming—to watch the man he had thought crippled and broken roll right through the front doors to claim his absolute pound of flesh.
They burst out of the basement stairwell into the main warehouse floor. Three of Victor’s elite enforcers were waiting behind a barricade of overturned mahogany crates, weapons raised and sweeping the shadows.
"Movement by the stairwell!" one of them shouted, squeezing the trigger of his submachine gun.
Bullets slammed into the concrete flooring and whined off the heavy iron support beams, throwing up clouds of thick white dust. Vince returned fire instantly from behind a steel pillar, his suppressed Glock rhythmically spitting rounds that suppressed the enforcers' advance.
Dominic didn't flinch. While the bullets flew overhead, he unclipped a heavy flash-bang grenade from the magnetic mount beneath his chair armrest, pulled the pin with his teeth, and hurled it with pinpoint accuracy over the enforcers' barricade.
"Cover your eyes!" Dominic roared.
BOOM. A blinding flash of white magnesium light and a deafening shockwave reverberated through the cavernous warehouse, instantly blinding and disorienting the guards. Before their vision could recover, Vince moved like a dark whirlwind, closing the distance and neutralizing the threat with ruthless, mechanical efficiency. Three bodies hit the floor in rapid succession.
Dominic rolled his chair directly over the debris, his tires crunching over shattered glass and spent brass casings. His jaw was locked into an unyielding line of absolute resolve. Above them, through the glass-paneled observation deck of the main executive office, a shadow stepped out onto the balcony.
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It was Victor Moretti.
Dressed in an immaculate Italian wool suit that contrasted sharply with the industrial squalor of the warehouse, Victor leaned over the railing, a cigar burning slowly in his hand. He looked down at his nephew in the wheelchair with an expression of cold, arrogant amusement, utterly unaware that the trap had just completely inverted on him.
