Chapter 10 - Blood In The Abandoned Warehouse Near Lake Michigan
The van screeched to a halt fifteen minutes later.
The sound of waves crashing against rusted pilings was clearly audible through the metal walls.
The old coal pier on the south shore of Lake Michigan.
An industrial wasteland of abandoned brick warehouses, rotting wooden piers, and rusted shipping containers abandoned since the 1980s.
The rear doors were wrenched open.
The gunman hauled me out into the biting morning wind.
The lake spray was cold against my feverish skin.
Vanessa jumped down, tucking her revolver into her coat pocket, looking frantically around the deserted lot.
A large corrugated metal warehouse with cracked, soot-blackened skylights stood twenty yards away.
The rusted sliding door was pulled open just enough for three men to stand guard inside the shadow.
“Over here!” a voice called out from the dark doorway.
It was Hector Ramos.
He had survived the estate gate firefight, but his left arm was in a sling, and blood soaked his tactical jacket.
Beside him stood Antonio Romano himself.
Fifty-five years old.
Short, stocky, with slicked-back gray hair and a tailored camel-hair coat that looked ridiculous in the grime of the abandoned pier.
He held an unlit cigar between thick, gold-ringed fingers.
“You brought the girl,” Romano said, his gravelly voice echoing in the vast, hollow space of the warehouse.
“I brought her, Antonio!” Vanessa rushed forward, her voice desperate and pleading. “I did what you asked! The wire broke because of her, but I got her back! Now give me the passport and the money! Mario is in Detroit, you said you would release Mario!”
Romano looked at Vanessa with utter disdain.
He didn't take the cigar from his mouth.
“Mario died forty-eight hours ago, Vanessa,” Romano said casually.
Vanessa froze mid-step.
Her mouth dropped open.
“What... what did you say?”
“Your brother tried to steal three kilos of cocaine from my warehouse in Dearborn to pay off his baccarat debts,” Romano shrugged. “We put him in Lake Huron on Tuesday. Did you really think I’d spare an idiot junkie like that?”
A sound ripped from Vanessa’s chest—a wail of grief and shock so raw it sounded like an animal being torn apart.
“YOU BASTARD! I GAVE YOU THE MORETTI DOCKS! I GAVE YOU ELENA!”
“And you failed,” Romano said coldly. “You got caught by a maid. You’re useless to me, Vanessa.”
Romano flicked his fingers toward Ramos.
Ramos raised his sidearm.
Vanessa didn't even have time to scream.
A single gunshot rang out inside the hollow warehouse.
Vanessa crumpled backward onto the dirt-caked concrete, clutching her chest, her eyes staring blankly at the rusted metal girders of the ceiling.
The woman who had tried to murder Elena, who had beaten me with a mirror, died on the filthy floor of a coal warehouse, betrayed by the very monster she had sold her soul to.
Romano didn't even glance at her corpse.
He turned his cold, reptilian eyes toward me.
“Claire Dawson.”
The gunman pushed me forward.
I stumbled, my knees scraping against the coarse gravel, but I refused to stay down.
I forced myself to stand upright.
I looked Antonio Romano straight in the eye.
“You look like your father,” Romano said, walking toward me. “Frank Dawson was a stubborn fool too. Took three bullets for old man Moretti when he could have walked away with a quarter million dollars.”
“My father died an honorable man,” I said, my voice steady despite the agony in my limbs. “You will die like a rat in this filthy warehouse.”
Romano’s eyes narrowed into slits.
He raised his hand and struck me across the jaw.
I hit the concrete floor hard.
Blood filled my mouth.
“Call Luca,” Romano ordered Ramos. “Tell him I have Frank Dawson’s daughter. Tell him if he wants her back in one piece, he signs over all six port terminals by noon today. If not—we drop her into Lake Michigan before lunch.”
Before Ramos could reach for his phone—
The sound of an approaching engine shattered the silence of the pier.
Not a car.
A heavy, twelve-cylinder armored truck.
Moving at seventy miles per hour.
No sirens.
No horns.
Just the ferocious, ungodly roar of six hundred horsepower tearing across the asphalt.
The warehouse’s metal sliding doors were obliterated in an explosion of twisting steel, flying rivets, and shattered brick.
A black tactical transport truck burst through the wall, plowing straight into two of Romano’s guard cars and sending them skidding fifty feet across the floor.
Before the dust could even settle—
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The truck’s heavy armored doors kicked open.
And Luca Moretti stepped out into the smoke.
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