Chapter 9 - The Ghost at Dock Fourteen
At two in the morning, the heavy iron door of the estate's subterranean holding cell swung open with a screech.
Dominic and Nicholas walked into the damp room where Frank Dalton sat cowering on a wooden chair, his wrists cuffed behind his back.
His lip was split, his leather jacket was torn, and his eyes darted frantically between the two mafia heirs.
Thomas stood behind the chair with an unlit cigar between his teeth, holding a thick wooden club.
Nicholas pulled up a metal chair, turned it backward, and sat down three feet from the promoter.
"Frank."
Dalton swallowed hard, pressing himself against the back of the chair.
"I told you everything I know, Moretti!"
"I swear to God on my children's lives!"
"You gave us names, Frank," Nicholas said, his voice as smooth as polished ice.
"Now you are going to give us coordinates."
Dominic tossed the Cayman Islands ledger onto Dalton's lap.
"Where is Vincent Cross hiding?"
Dalton shook his head frantically.
"Cross doesn't stay in the city!"
"He lives on a cargo vessel registered out of Panama!"
"The vessel is docked at Point Bennett, dock fourteen, in the industrial basin!"
Nicholas’s eyes narrowed into slits.
"Dock fourteen?"
"The same dock my father used thirty years ago?"
Dalton nodded so hard his chin hit his chest.
"Yes! Yes!"
"Victor bought the entire shipping terminal five years ago through a holding company!"
"Cross manages the wire transfers directly from the ship's communications deck!"
"Victor is using the ship's satellite relays to empty the Moretti family offshore reserves before the morning banking exchange opens!"
Dominic checked his platinum wristwatch.
"The European currency markets open at three-thirty in the morning."
"Victor is liquidating the syndicate's operational capital."
"He is planning to cut and run after framing us for the shootout at my compound."
Nicholas stood up, turning to Thomas.
"Keep Dalton locked in this room until we return."
"If he makes a sound, put a bullet through his kneecap."
Thirty minutes later, four black tactical SUVs moved silently through the dense coastal fog toward Point Bennett.
The industrial basin was completely abandoned, lined with rusting cargo cranes and towering stacks of multicolored shipping containers.
The smell of brine, sulfur, and rotting wood hung thick over the black water of the bay.
At the far end of pier fourteen, an old three-hundred-foot freighter named the Santa Elena was tied to heavy iron bollards.
Yellow halogen lights flickered along the ship's main deck, cutting narrow beams through the swirling mist.
Four armed sentries in dark tactical gear patrolled the gangway, assault rifles slung across their chests.
Nicholas, Dominic, Marcus, and eight elite Vale security operators crept along the shadows of the container stacks.
Grace had insisted on riding in the lead SUV, refusing to stay behind at the estate while her family’s fate was decided.
She waited inside the command vehicle with Robert Hale, watching the thermal camera feeds broadcast from the pier.
"Two snipers on the crane tower," Grace whispered into her tactical headset.
"I know this dock, Dominic."
"My father worked maintenance on crane three for six years before his back gave out."
"The blind spot is beneath the western conveyor belt along the water's edge."
Dominic touched his earpiece, his voice calm amidst the tension.
"Copy that, Grace."
"Marcus, take the team under the conveyor."
"Nicholas and I will breach the aft cabin."
The strike was sudden, silent, and devastatingly precise.
Marcus and two operators slipped through the darkness beneath the rusted steel conveyor belt, neutralizing the two perimeter guards with suppressed sidearms before they could raise an alarm.
Nicholas and Dominic ascended the rear maintenance ladder of the Santa Elena, moving like wraiths across the wet metal deck.
The hatch leading to the ship’s primary communications room was locked from the inside with an electronic keypad.
Dominic signaled his breacher, who attached a small magnetic thermite strip along the locking pins.
A silent hiss of blinding white sparks ate through the steel in two seconds.
Nicholas kicked the door inward with a thunderous bang.
Inside, the communications room was glowing with five large computer monitors showing real-time banking transfers.
Stacks of foreign currency, passports, and ledger files were piled across a long aluminum counter.
Sitting in front of the primary terminal was a frail, sixty-five-year-old man with thick glasses and white hair, typing frantically into an encrypted keyboard.
Vincent Cross.
The accountant who had supposedly burned to death in a car bomb outside the courthouse twenty years ago.
Cross spun around in his swivel chair, dropping a cup of tea onto the keyboard.
He saw Nicholas’s nine-millimeter pointed directly between his eyes and raised his trembling hands into the air.
"Nicholas... please..."
Nicholas stepped forward, his eyes blazing with an icy, merciless rage.
"You look remarkably lively for a pile of dental records and ash, Vincent."
Cross began hyperventilating, his chest heaving against his woolen vest.
"Victor forced me, Nicholas!"
"He planted the bomb in my car twenty years ago to fake my death!"
"He held my grandchildren hostage in Zurich until I agreed to build his shadow accounts!"
Dominic stepped into the cabin, glancing at the glowing monitors.
"Cancel the transfers, Cross."
"Right now."
Cross shook his head in terror.
"I can't!"
"Victor is already at the Moretti family estate on Ridge Road!"
"He called an emergency meeting of the Five Families Syndicate Council for five o'clock this morning!"
"He is telling the bosses that you and Dominic went rogue and executed the Vale security detail!"
"He is using these wire transfers to pay off the council capos to ratify his coronation as the new head of both families!"
Nicholas lowered his firearm by an inch, a cold, dangerous smile touching his lips.
"So my uncle wants a coronation?"
He grabbed Cross by the collar and hauled the terrified accountant out of his chair.
May you like
"Gather your ledgers, Vincent."
"You are going to be the guest of honor at my uncle’s funeral."
