Chapter 11 - The Crucible of Smoke and Blood
The world above Madeline fractured into deafening concussions of gunfire and flying splinters of brick.
Dominic’s massive weight pressed her down against the icy concrete, his warm blood soaking through her shearling coat until her skin burned with it.
His breath came in shallow, wet hitches that rasped directly against her earlobe.
"Dominic!" she screamed, her hands clawing into the soaked wool of his overcoat.
Her own surgical incision tore open with a sharp, fiery pain that ripped through her ribcage, but she barely felt it.
Two heavy rifle rounds had punched through Dominic’s upper back, and the dark pool spreading across the floor was widening by the second.
Above them, Lorenzo Castiglione was firing his automatic sidearm with rhythmic, brutal precision.
"Marco! Suppress the northern gantry!" Lorenzo’s roar tore through the howling gunsmoke.
"Do not let them advance on the floor!"
Vincent Corvo charged forward through the shattered rolling door, his assault rifle spitting bursts of continuous fire into the refinery.
He was screaming Salvatore’s final order to execute every living soul inside the walls.
Corvo’s boots crunched over the debris, his barrel shifting downward toward Madeline’s head where she lay trapped beneath Dominic’s limp body.
Before Corvo could squeeze the trigger, the southern entrance of the sugar refinery collapsed in a shower of sparks and bent iron.
Three armored black Mercedes sedans smashed through the secondary loading bay at full speed.
Matteo Bianchi hung out of the passenger window of the lead sedan, a combat shotgun roaring in his fists.
The blast caught Corvo’s primary gunner square in the chest, throwing him back against the burning engine block of the van.
"Manhattan, lay down fire!" Matteo bellowed, dropping to the pavement as ten Vitiello loyalists poured from the sedans with assault weapons raised.
The abandoned sugar hall turned into an absolute slaughterhouse of crossfire.
Brooklyn and Manhattan soldiers, enemies for five bitter years, suddenly fought shoulder to shoulder against Salvatore’s mercenary squad.
Pincered between Lorenzo’s snipers on the high iron catwalks and Matteo’s heavy strike team on the ground, Corvo’s men were systematically cut down.
Corvo scrambled behind an overturned steel pallet, his magazine empty, blood streaming from his forehead where shrapnel had torn his brow.
Lorenzo stepped forward through the settling cordite smoke, his weapon leveled dead at Corvo’s face.
"Tell Salvatore that Brooklyn sends its regards," Lorenzo said without a trace of emotion.
The report of Lorenzo’s Kimber echoed off the vaulted ceiling like a thunderclap, and Vincent Corvo collapsed lifeless into the debris.
The sudden cessation of gunfire left only the hissing of punctured radiators and the bitter smell of burnt sulfur.
Madeline struggled beneath the crushing dead weight of her husband, her fingers slick with his lifeblood.
"Matteo!" she cried out, her voice ragged and breathless.
"Matteo, get him off me! He’s dying!"
Matteo dropped his shotgun on the floor and sprinted across the blood-slicked concrete, dropping to his knees beside them.
"Dom! Boss, hold on!" Matteo gasped, his hands trembling as he wedged his shoulders under Dominic’s armpits.
With Lorenzo pulling from the other side, they rolled Dominic onto his back.
Dominic’s eyes were half-open, glazed with the gray veil of hemorrhagic shock, his lips coated in pink froth.
His left hand was still clenched tight in a fist over his breast pocket, where Madeline’s bloody pearls remained buried.
"He took two center-mass hits to the upper dorsal wall," Lorenzo shouted, tearing off his own coat to pack the entrance wounds.
"His lung is collapsing!"
"We need to move him right now!" Matteo yelled, his face white with terror.
"The Navy Yard clinic is three minutes away," Lorenzo commanded, looking directly into Matteo’s desperate eyes.
"If we try to cross the Manhattan Bridge, he’ll be a corpse before we hit Chinatown."
"Do you trust me to save him, Matteo?"
Matteo looked at Dominic’s pale, bloodless face, then looked up at the rival Don who had every reason to watch the Vitiello bloodline end.
"Get the gurney," Matteo choked out.
"Save him, Lorenzo."
Madeline forced herself to crawl forward on her hands and knees, ignoring the agonizing fire in her own fractured ribs.
She reached out and took Dominic’s cold, limp hand in hers, pressing his bloody knuckles against her cheek.
"Don't you dare close your eyes, Dominic," she sobbed, her tears washing through the dirt and soot on his skin.
"You hear me?"
"You don't get to die in Brooklyn after what you did."
"You wake up."
"You wake up and face me."
Dominic’s eyelids fluttered faintly at the sound of her voice, his blood-slick fingers twitching weakly against her palm.
May you like
"Madeline..." he whispered, a faint, dying sigh that carried no air behind it.
Then his fingers went entirely limp, and his head rolled back against the cold concrete as the siren of Lorenzo’s armored ambulance wailed into the yard.
