Chapter 5 - The Ultimate Sacrifice
Down in the pitch-black panic room, the air was growing thin.
Leo sat huddled against Isabella, his small body shaking uncontrollably. Lily had fallen quiet, her big eyes wide with terror as distant thumping vibrations rumbled through the concrete floor beneath them.
“Mommy,” Leo whispered, his voice trembling. “Is my dad going to beat the bad guys?”
Isabella wrapped her arms around both children, her own eyes burning with unshed tears. She prayed silently to any god that would listen. She thought of the cold, forbidding man upstairs who had wept in his study—a man imprisoned by his own grief, fighting a war he never asked for.
“Yes, Leo,” Isabella whispered fiercely, willing herself to believe her own words. “Your dad is the strongest man in this city. He won't let anything happen to us.”
Above them, in the kitchen, the standoff reached a boiling point.
Dominic kept his gun trained on Salvatore, but out of the corner of his eye, he could hear the muffled sound of a portable drill biting into the steel of the basement vault door. Time was running out.
“Drop your weapon, Salvatore,” Dominic ordered, his finger tightening on the trigger. “Call your men off the hatch.”
“Make me,” Salvatore taunted, raising his submachine gun.
Dominic didn't hesitate. He pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The bullet caught Salvatore square in the chest. The traitor staggered backward, his gun firing wildly into the ceiling before he collapsed onto the blood-stained kitchen floor, lifeless.
Without breaking stride, Dominic spun around and sprinted down the cellar stairs, charging into the smoke-filled darkness of the wine cellar.
Two of Vincenzo’s hitmen were kneeling by the vault hatch, frantically wiring a C4 detonator to the hydraulic lock.
“Hey!” Dominic yelled.
The hitmen spun around, but before they could raise their rifles, Dominic emptied the remainder of his magazine into them, dropping both men instantly onto the wine-soaked stone floor.
He rushed to the heavy steel hatch, hammering his fists against the metal.
“Isabella! Leo! Are you alright?” Dominic shouted, his voice cracking with panic.
Inside the vault, the heavy hatch popped open a fraction of an inch as Isabella threw the manual override lever.
Leo’s small face appeared in the gap, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Dad!”
“Listen to me, Leo,” Dominic said, kneeling down and grabbing the edge of the hatch to open it fully. He looked at Isabella, his dark eyes fierce, filled with an absolute, uncompromising resolve. “Take the children through the secondary drainage tunnel behind the wine racks. It leads out to the boathouse on the river. Marcus has a car waiting there.”
“What about you?” Isabella demanded, grabbing his sleeve through the gap. “Dominic, there are more of them upstairs! You can’t hold the house alone!”
“I’m not staying to hold the house,” Dominic said softly. He reached out, his calloused hand gently touching his son’s cheek for the first time in his life. “I’m ending this. Once and for all.”
Before Isabella could argue, Dominic slammed the vault hatch shut, engaging the exterior locking mechanism from the outside.
“Dad! Open the door! Dad!” Leo screamed from inside, his small fists pounding desperately against the steel.
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Dominic stood up in the dark, smoke-filled cellar. He walked slowly back up the stone steps, pulling a fresh, loaded magazine from his belt and snapping it into his pistol.
He was Dominic Moretti. He was the ghost of Boston’s underworld. And he was going to make sure his son inherited a world free of shadows.
