Chapter 4 - The Hunter and the Prey
Vincent was choking, his face turning a mottled, bruised purple as his fingernails dug bloody furrows into Lorenzo’s forearms.
"Lorenzo! Stop! He can't talk if you crush his trachea!" Mason barked, stepping forward, his hands out, maintaining tactical control even in the face of the Don’s incandescent rage.
Lorenzo loosened his grip by a fraction of an inch, just enough for a ragged, whistling gasp of oxygen to tear down Vincent’s throat.
Vincent coughed violently, spraying flecks of bloody saliva onto the lapel of his tailored jacket. "I... I don't know the exact street," he wheezed, his voice reduced to a broken croak. "I swear to God, Lorenzo... I don't know where she is this morning!"
Lorenzo’s hand tightened again, the knuckles whitening. "You have five seconds before I break your neck on this table, Vincent. Four."
"Anthony!" Vincent choked out, his heels drumming frantically against the mahogany wood. "Anthony Bell! He was the one running the sweep! He’s... he’s operating out of a safe house in Red Hook! A boat repair yard on Van Brunt Street! He has the live scanner feeds! If she’s alive, he’s the only one who knows which grid she ran into!"
Lorenzo stared down at the man who had been his closest companion for over two decades. There was no hatred left in Lorenzo’s face; there was only a profound, arctic void. The realization that twenty-two years of shared meals, shared secrets, and blood-sworn loyalty could be dismantled by nine million dollars and a coward’s fear was a more brutal wound than any bullet he had ever taken.
Lorenzo pulled Vincent up by his collar and threw him against the wall like a sack of damp linen. Vincent collapsed onto the carpet, clutching his bruised throat, weeping uncontrollably.
"Mason," Lorenzo said, not looking back. "Call Ortiz. Tell her the penthouse is secure. Hand him over."
"Lorenzo," Vincent sobbed from the floor, reaching out a trembling, manicured hand. "Renzo... please... don't leave me to the feds... they’ll put me in maximum security... Renzo, please!"
Lorenzo paused at the double doors. He didn't turn around.
"You told me at the cemetery that I had to keep living," Lorenzo said softly. "You were right. But you don't get to live in my world anymore, Vincent. In fact, by the time Ortiz’s prosecutors finish with you, you’ll wish you were in that casket with Claire Donnelly."
The doors clicked shut behind them.
***
The drive to Red Hook took twenty-two minutes through the gray, predawn downpour.
Mason drove the Maybach with surgical precision, weaving through the early morning delivery trucks along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. In the passenger seat, Lorenzo reloaded the Kimber 1911, his mind running through the timeline.
Isabella had escaped the Kingston farmhouse three weeks ago.
*Three weeks.*
For twenty-one days, while he had sat in his climate-controlled study drinking Scotch, his wife had been sleeping in abandoned boxcars, foraging in dumpsters, nursing fractured ribs and a concussion, wrapped in a torn coat with an eighty-pound starving dog as her only shield.
Why hadn't she called?
The answer was painfully, terribly clear now. Vincent controlled the estate's telecommunications. Vincent’s shell companies managed the private security contracts. If Isabella had reached out to any of the old numbers, if she had walked into any of the family’s social clubs or corporate offices, she would have walked directly into Anthony Bell’s crosshairs.
And then there was the threat.
*“Keep the little girl’s mouth shut, or we will bury her next to the boss’s wife.”*
Sophia had helped Isabella gather the household accounting records two months ago. Isabella knew that Vincent was ruthless enough to butcher a three-year-old child just to eliminate a witness. Isabella had stayed in the shadows not merely to save herself, but to keep the monster from turning his teeth toward Sophia and Emma.
"Anthony Bell is former private military," Mason said, breaking the silence as the Maybach turned onto the cracked cobblestones of Van Brunt Street. "Discharged from Blackwater in '08 for excessive force during an escort detail in Fallujah. He’s tactical, he’s paranoid, and he’s heavily armed. He won't go down with a subpoena."
"He won't have the chance," Lorenzo said.
The boat repair yard sat on a decaying pier jutting out into the gray, choppy waters of New York Harbor. The air smelled of low tide, diesel fumes, and wet salt. Rusted steel boat hulls rested on wooden dry-dock cradles under sagging green tarps.
At the end of the pier, tucked behind a stack of rusted shipping containers, was a low-slung cinderblock office with a corrugated metal roof. Parked outside, mud caked along its wheel wells, was the dark gray Chevrolet Tahoe.
Mason killed the Maybach’s headlights two hundred yards out, gliding the heavy sedan behind an abandoned crane.
"The Tahoe’s engine block is still warm," Mason said, looking through the thermal scope. "One heat signature inside the office. Sitting at a desk."
Lorenzo stepped out into the freezing rain, racking the slide of his .45. "Front and back?"
"I’ll take the water-facing window," Mason whispered, drawing his suppressed tactical carbine from the rear seat. "You breach the door. On three."
They moved across the slick cobblestones without a sound, their boots finding the grass and gravel to muffle their approach.
Mason took up position beside the salt-crusted window on the east wall, giving Lorenzo a single, sharp nod.
Lorenzo didn't bother picking the lock.
He struck the door beside the brass deadbolt with the flat of his heavy boot.
The wooden frame shattered with a sound like a small cannon going off. The door flew inward, rebounding off the cinderblock wall.
Inside, Anthony Bell was already moving.
He was forty, bald, with a thick tactical beard and cold, dead eyes. He was wearing a gray hoodie and tactical pants, sitting behind a folding table covered in radio scanners, laptops, and city utility maps.
At the sound of the breach, Bell’s hand dropped toward a customized SIG Sauer P226 resting on the table blotter.
*Crack.*
A round from Mason’s suppressed carbine shattered the window glass, tearing through the meat of Bell’s right bicep before his fingers could touch the grip of the pistol.
Bell roared in pain, clutching his arm as the weapon clattered to the linoleum floor. He spun toward the door, reaching for a tactical knife clipped to his belt with his left hand—
Lorenzo crossed the room in two strides.
He grabbed the barrel of the Kimber 1911 and brought the heavy steel handle down across the bridge of Bell’s nose with brutal, pulverizing force.
Bone crunched. Blood sprayed across the maps on the table. Bell collapsed backward over his swivel chair, crashing to the floor, gasping for breath as blood gushed from his shattered face.
Lorenzo planted his heavy boot directly onto Bell’s wounded right shoulder, pressing down with calculated, agonizing pressure.
Bell screamed, a high, strangled sound that died in the hum of the radio scanners.
"Where is she, Anthony?" Lorenzo asked. His voice was terrifyingly low, conversational, stripped of all human warmth.
"Go to hell, DeLuca," Bell spat through a mouthful of blood and broken teeth. "Your wife’s already dead. If she didn't drown in the rail cut, my boy finished her off an hour ago—"
Lorenzo didn't argue. He shifted his weight, driving his heel deeper into the open bullet wound in Bell’s arm.
Bell shrieked, his back arching off the floor, his fingers clawing at the linoleum. "Stop! Stop! Jesus Christ, stop!"
"I am not Vincent," Lorenzo said, leaning down until his shadow completely engulfed the bleeding mercenary. "Vincent is a businessman who hides behind lawyers and wire transfers. I grew up in the lower holds of the freight terminals, Anthony. I know twenty-six different ways to keep a man conscious while his ribs are removed one by one. You have thirty seconds to tell me where Isabella is, or I will feed you to the harbor crabs piece by piece."
Bell’s eyes dilated with sheer, unadulterated animal terror. He had seen Lorenzo DeLuca at a distance for years; he knew the legends. He knew that the man standing over him had personally dismantled the Russian syndicate in Brighton Beach ten years ago without a single arrest ever being made.
"The church!" Bell gasped, choking on his own blood. "The Catholic shelter... St. Jude’s... on 8th Avenue and 16th Street!"
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed. "Why St. Jude’s?"
"She was spotted by a street outreach van at four in the morning!" Bell sobbed, his resistance entirely shattered. "The driver called the non-emergency dispatch about an injured woman with a service animal! I had the scanner tapped! I sent Miller... my shooter from the warehouse... to intercept her before the parish priest could check her in!"
"When?" Lorenzo demanded, pressing harder. "When did Miller leave?"
"Ten minutes ago!" Bell screamed. "He’s driving a stolen city utility van! He’s going to stage it as an overdose in the alley behind the soup kitchen! That’s the truth, I swear on my mother’s soul, that’s all I know!"
Mason was already tapping into the NYPD traffic camera grid on Bell’s laptop.
"He’s telling the truth, Lorenzo," Mason said, his fingers flying across the keys. "A white Department of Transportation van ran the light at Flatbush and 4th eight minutes ago, heading north toward the bridge. It matches the transponder."
Lorenzo looked down at Bell. He lifted his boot from the mercenary's bleeding shoulder.
Bell let out a shuddering sigh of relief, curling into a fetal position on the dirty floor. "Thank you... God, thank you..."
Lorenzo stepped toward the door. As he passed Mason, he paused.
"Tie him to the steel beam," Lorenzo said quietly. "Call Ortiz. Tell her that if she wants Anthony Bell alive to testify against Vincent, her paramedics have forty minutes to stop the arterial bleeding in his arm."
"Understood," Mason said.
Lorenzo walked out into the freezing rain, threw the Kimber onto the passenger seat of the Maybach, and hit the ignition.
May you like
The twin-turbo V12 engine roared to life with a predatory growl. Lorenzo slammed the transmission into gear, the heavy tires smoking against the wet cobblestones as the car launched toward the Manhattan Bridge.
***
