Chapter 9 - The Marina Judgment
At zero-two hundred hours on Monday morning, the industrial marina basin in South Harbor was completely deserted.
A thick smell of low-tide mud, rotting kelp, and diesel exhaust hung heavy in the freezing sleet.
Tied to the end of Pier 14 was a seventy-foot luxury motor yacht named The Queen of Hearts, registered to a commercial holding company owned by the Moretti family.
The yacht’s twin diesel engines were idling with a low, rhythmic vibration that sent small ripples across the black, oily water.
Inside the vessel’s plush mahogany salon, sixty-four-year-old Salvatore Moretti sat at a leather banquet table, nursing a glass of twenty-year-old single malt scotch.
Salvatore was a man who had survived four decades in the five families by never getting his own hands dirty.
He had soft, manicured hands, wore seven-thousand-dollar cashmere coats, and conducted his executions through encrypted telephone orders given to third-party mercenaries.
Across from him sat two of his senior capos, both wearing heavy leather jackets, their eyes glued to an encrypted satellite communications terminal resting on the table.
The screen was supposed to flash green when the five-man strike team confirmed the termination of the Rossi heir on Black Cliff Ridge.
It had been dark for forty-five minutes.
“Call them again,” Salvatore snapped, his voice grating with nervous irritation.
“I told you, Boss, they’re running in radio-silent blackout mode until they reach the extraction van,” the younger capo replied, checking his gold Rolex.
“The weather is tearing the cellular towers apart along the ridge.”
“They had the bedroom camera feed right up to the breach.”
“The kid was in the bed.”
“There’s no way Vincent Rossi stopped five Tier-One contractors with thirty seconds of warning.”
Salvatore took a heavy swallow of his scotch, but his gut remained tight with a cold, sickening premonition.
He had known Vincent Rossi since Vincent was an eighteen-year-old enforcer running muscle on the docks.
Vincent was not a man who died easily.
Vincent was the kind of rabid dog that tore its own leg out of a bear trap just to bite the hunter’s throat.
Suddenly, the yacht’s salon lights flickered once, twice, and died.
The low thrum of the diesel generator in the engine room sputtered and cut out, plunging the luxury cabin into pitch-black darkness.
Only the pale amber streetlights from the pier filtered through the rain-streaked salon windows.
“What the hell happened to the auxiliary power?” Salvatore yelled, standing up so quickly his whiskey glass tipped over, splashing amber liquor across the mahogany table.
“Geno, take your piece and check the engine compartment!”
The older capo drew a chrome-plated .45 automatic from his shoulder holster, clicking the safety off with his thumb.
He walked toward the companionway door leading down to the lower engine deck.
He reached for the stainless-steel handle.
Before his fingers could touch the metal, the heavy teak door exploded inward.
A black-clad figure burst into the cabin like an armored projectile, driving the steel butt of a shotgun directly into Geno’s face.
The bone of Geno’s nose shattered with a wet, sickening crunch, and the capo was thrown backward across the salon, his gun skittering across the floorboards.
The younger capo reached for his waistband, but he was far too slow.
A single suppressed gunshot cracked through the darkness, followed immediately by the dull thud of a heavy hollow-point bullet striking center-mass.
The young capo gasped, stumbled sideways into the leather banquet, and slid down to the carpet, clutching his chest as dark blood pooled between his fingers.
Salvatore Moretti backed away until his shoulders hit the thick glass of the stern window, his hands trembling violently.
“Who... who is that?” Salvatore shrieked into the shadows.
“I have half a million in cash in the lower safe! Take it! Take whatever you want!”
The figure stepped out of the darkness into the faint amber light coming through the window.
Vincent Rossi was covered in dried blood and gray plaster dust.
His ceramic armor was cracked in three places; a jagged cut along his forehead was slowly dripping red onto his left cheekbone.
In his right hand, he held the suppressed SIG Sauer, its slide locked back, smoking faintly in the damp air.
He tossed a small, bloody object onto the table.
It was the customized tactical communications headset worn by the contractor leader on the north terrace.
Salvatore looked down at the headset, and all the color drained from his wrinkled face until he looked like a corpse.
“Vincent...” Salvatore whispered, his voice trembling so violently he could barely pronounce the syllables.
“Listen to me... it wasn't personal... it was business...”
“The harbor turf... the Newark shipments... you were squeezing my crews out of the piers...”
“I had to make a move... you understand how this life works, Vincent!”
Vincent walked slowly toward the old mob boss, his heavy combat boots squeaking against the wet carpet.
He did not raise the gun.
He reached out with his left hand, grabbed Salvatore by the lapels of his seven-thousand-dollar cashmere coat, and hoisted the older man off his feet with terrifying, effortless strength.
He slammed Salvatore against the bulletproof glass of the stern window, pressing his forearm against the old man’s windpipe.
“You sent five mercenaries into an eight-year-old boy’s bedroom,” Vincent said, his voice dropping into a register so cold, so profoundly dead, that it sounded like it was coming from the bottom of an open grave.
“You had a technician splice into his private camera so you could watch him get murdered in his sleep.”
“Vincent... please...” Salvatore choked out, his hands clawing uselessly at Vincent’s iron wrists.
“I’ll leave the state... I’ll give you the Brooklyn piers... I’ll give you everything...”
“I don’t want your piers, Salvatore,” Vincent whispered, leaning in until his nose was an inch from Moretti’s ear.
“I already took them.”
“Your warehouse in Red Hook is burning to the ground right now.”
“Dominic’s crews hit your docks thirty minutes ago.”
“Every boat you own is sitting at the bottom of the bay.”
“You have no soldiers left.”
“You have no money left.”
“And you have no breath left.”
Vincent did not use the pistol.
He shifted his grip, wrapped his right hand around Salvatore’s throat, and drove the old boss downward into the heavy mahogany table.
The wood splintered under the violent impact.
Vincent held the old man’s neck against the jagged wood, applying slow, relentless, crushing pressure until Salvatore’s thrashing hands slowly went limp, his eyes bulging wide in the dim amber light.
When the old man finally stopped moving, Vincent held him for another thirty seconds, making certain the pulse beneath the wrinkled skin had permanently ceased.
Vincent released his grip and stepped back.
He stood in the silent, dark cabin of The Queen of Hearts, surrounded by the bodies of the men who had orchestrated the nightmare on Route 9.
The debt had been collected in full.
The blood that had stained his family’s name for fourteen months had been washed clean in the dark waters of the harbor.
Vincent pulled a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the blood from his fingers.
He dropped the cloth onto Salvatore Moretti’s chest, turned on his heel, and walked out into the cold morning air.
He walked down the wooden dock to where an unmarked black sedan was waiting for him, its engine purring quietly in the sleet.
He opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed the encrypted number for the Point Pleasant safehouse.
The line clicked open on the second ring.
“Boss?” Dominic answered.
“It’s over, Dominic,” Vincent said, his voice hoarse from cordite and exhaustion.
May you like
“Tell Clara to pack the medical bags.”
“I’m coming to take my family home.”
