Chapter 9 - Blood on the Salt Water
Clara held her breath so hard her chest felt as if it were being compressed by an iron band.
She pressed her back against the damp, freezing granite wall of the sea cave, her fingers digging into the rough fissures of the rock.
Directly above their heads, the floorboards of the old boathouse groaned under the weight of at least two heavy men.
Vincent was already moving.
He did not look back at Clara; he melted into the pitch-black shadows of the spiral staircase like smoke vanishing into a chimney.
He climbed the rusted iron steps without making a single sound, his stocking-footed boots finding purchase on the outermost edges of the metal treads.
Through the floorboards, a rough, gravelly voice filtered down through the damp air.
“Tear the damn walls apart if you have to,” the voice rasped, heavy with a thick New Jersey accent.
“Marco said the bitch had private ledgers.”
“If they aren't in the mansion, they are hidden out here where she used to paint her stupid pictures.”
Clara recognized that voice instantly.
It was Tommy Vane, the courier who had slipped the photograph of her sister under her door earlier that evening.
The second man grunted in frustration, the sound of splintering wood echoing through the boathouse as an axe head bit into a storage crate.
“Tommy, the tide is coming in,” the second man complained.
“If Rossi’s patrol spots our launch on the rocks, we are dead meat.”
“Shut your mouth and keep swinging,” Tommy snarled.
“Marco is going to be the boss of the entire coast by Thursday morning.”
“When he takes the throne, you and I get the Atlantic City gaming concessions.”
“Just find the damn papers!”
Vincent reached the top of the iron staircase.
He placed his palm against the underside of the wooden trapdoor, testing its weight.
It was unlocked, covered only by a thin layer of old canvas sails.
Vincent looked down into the dark cavern.
He caught Clara’s eyes in the dim moonlight filtering through the sea cave entrance, raising three fingers, then two, then one.
With an explosion of violent speed, Vincent shoved the trapdoor open and launched himself into the boathouse.
The suppressed crack of his Kimber sounded like a heavy staple gun firing in rapid succession.
The man with the axe collapsed instantly onto a pile of fishing nets, a single round through his heart ending his life before he hit the timber.
Tommy Vane, however, was a seasoned street fighter.
He threw himself behind a heavy overturned rowboat, drawing a nickel-plated revolver and firing blindly toward the trapdoor.
The unsuppressed gunshot roared inside the enclosed boathouse like a cannon, shattering two glass lanterns and sending shards of ceramic raining onto the floor.
Clara did not wait in the cave.
Driven by pure adrenaline and the knowledge of what was at stake, she scrambled up the iron stairs and pulled herself into the room.
The smell of cordite and burning oil was choking.
Vincent was already flanking the rowboat, his weapon leveled, when Tommy suddenly kicked the heavy wooden hull violently forward.
The wooden keel slammed into Vincent’s left shoulder, knocking his aim off for a split second.
Tommy lunged forward like a rabid pit bull, driving a six-inch combat knife straight toward Vincent’s throat.
Vincent blocked the blade with his left forearm, the razor-sharp steel slicing deep through his jacket and cutting into his muscle.
Blood sprayed across the wooden deck.
Vincent did not cry out; he seized Tommy’s wrist with the iron grip of a man who had survived a dozen back-alley assassinations.
He drove his knee brutally into Tommy’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of the larger man in a wet, ragged gasp.
With a terrifying twist of his shoulders, Vincent snapped Tommy’s wrist over the gunwale of the rowboat with an audible crack.
The knife clattered to the floorboards.
Tommy screamed, dropping to his knees, but Vincent’s right hand clamped around his throat like a hydraulic press, lifting the courier off the floor.
“Where is the boat?” Clara shouted, ignoring the violence and scrambling toward the high shelving unit at the back of the room.
The shelves had been overturned during the struggle, dozens of dusty boxes and oil painting canvases lying scattered across the floor.
Clara dropped to her knees, frantically tossing aside broken picture frames and tubes of dried acrylic paint.
And then, pinned beneath a heavy canvas depiction of a stormy ocean, she saw it.
It was a miniature wooden racing sloop, painted in faded royal blue with a crisp white star carved into the wooden mainsail.
The hull was cracked along the starboard side, but the keel was intact.
Clara snatched the model into her hands, turning it upside down.
Just as Matteo had said, there was a tiny brass screw hidden behind the lead ballast of the keel.
She pressed her thumbnail into the latch and twisted.
A small compartment in the center of the wooden hull sprang open with a dull pop.
Inside, wrapped in waterproof silicone tape, lay a sleek, high-capacity brushed-aluminum flash drive.
“Vincent! I have it!” Clara cried out, holding the tiny silver piece of metal in the air.
In the center of the room, Vincent had Tommy pinned against the wall, his Kimber pressed firmly against the courier’s forehead.
Tommy was spitting blood, his face bruised and swollen, but he let out a wet, mocking laugh.
“You are... too late, Rossi,” Tommy choked out, blood bubbling between his teeth.
“Marco... already made the deal with the Santoros.”
“The summit at the Grand Atlantic... it’s not a vote.”
“The moment you walk into that ballroom with your kid... three car bombs in the subterranean garage are going off.”
“Marco is blowing the entire hotel... wiping out you, the council, and the old capos in one stroke.”
“He’s going to rule the ashes.”
Vincent’s eyes did not waver.
“Not from where you are going,” Vincent whispered.
Vincent pulled the trigger once.
Tommy Vane slumped forward, lifeless, hitting the bloody timber of the boathouse deck.
The room fell into a terrifying, deafening silence, broken only by the rhythmic crashing of the Atlantic waves against the pilings below.
Vincent stood over the body for two seconds, his chest heaving, his left sleeve soaked in dark, arterial blood.
Clara rushed to his side, tearing the hem of her scrub shirt into a long strip of clean cotton.
“You are bleeding heavily,” she said, her hands moving with professional precision as she wrapped the fabric tight around his forearm.
“It’s just flesh,” Vincent muttered, his face pale under the moonlight.
Clara pulled the knot tight, looking up directly into his shadowed eyes.
“Stop pretending you are made of stone, Vincent,” she whispered, her voice fierce and full of an emotion that terrified them both.
“You almost died just now.”
“If you die, Matteo has no one.”
Vincent looked down at the tiny silver flash drive clutched in her other hand.
He reached out with his uninjured hand, gently touching Clara’s cold fingers.
“He has you,” Vincent said, his voice dropping into a tender, vulnerable cadence she had never heard from him before.
“He spoke tonight because of you, Clara.”
“Elena spent her whole life trying to bring light into my darkness.”
“When she died, I thought the sun had set forever.”
“You brought it back into this house.”
Clara felt her breath catch in her throat as Vincent’s thumb brushed softly against her cheekbone.
For a single, suspended second, the violence of their world vanished beneath the crashing of the tide.
May you like
Then, from the sea cave below, the low rumble of an approaching speedboat engine shattered the fragile moment.
The reinforcements had arrived.
