Chapter 4 - “Nothing.”
Arya’s voice broke.
“I don’t know.”
His eyes moved to the ring now worn on her finger.
He seized her hand.
The metal carried the engraved wolf.
Vinnie stared.
“This.”
His expression became obsessive.
“It always comes back to this ring.”
He tried to remove it.
The metal refused to move.
“Is the code inside?”
He twisted harder.
“Etched into the band?”
“It’s stuck.”
Arya gasped.
“Stuck.”
Vinnie smiled.
Then took out a switchblade.
The blade opened.
“There are solutions for stuck.”
He placed it near her finger.
“If the ring will not leave the finger…”
His eyes met hers.
“…the finger leaves the hand.”
Arya stared at the blade.
“Dante will kill you.”
Vinnie’s smile faltered slightly.
“He will burn New York looking for me.”
Nervousness appeared beneath Vinnie’s arrogance.
“Dante is in Queens.”
He tried to sound confident.
“Cleaning up a problem I created.”
Arya’s eyes changed.
“I sent him after the wrong man.”
Vinnie pressed the knife closer.
“By the time Dante Moretti realizes his little bird is gone…”
He smiled.
“…I’ll have Lorenzo’s ledger.”
A pause.
“And you’ll be in the Hudson.”
Across the city, Dante stood inside a Queens warehouse over the body of the capo he believed had betrayed him.
The man was dead.
It should have felt like justice.
Dante felt only dread.
His phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
2 images.
No message.
The first photograph showed Luca’s body inside the Southampton estate.
Dante’s face went rigid.
Luca had been his brother in every way except blood.
Then Dante opened the second image.
Arya.
Tied to a chair.
Industrial background.
Blood at her mouth.
The sound that came from Dante made his own men move backward.
It was not a word.
It was a roar.
The control that defined him disappeared.
The ice broke.
Underneath it was fire.
“Boss?”
Saul, the hard man now serving as his temporary second-in-command, approached carefully.
“What happened?”
Dante looked up.
His face contained no strategy.
Only murder.
“They have her.”
His voice sounded like stone grinding.
“Rossi has her.”
“It’s a trap.”
Saul tried to keep him focused.
“Dante, he wants you to charge in.”
“He’ll have 50 men above the floor.”
“We need a plan.”
“Plan?”
Dante interrupted quietly.
He went to the trunk of his vehicle.
Opened it.
Military-grade weapons filled the space.
Dante lifted 2 assault rifles.
He threw 1 to Saul.
“Call everyone.”
He checked a pistol.
“Soldiers.”
“Associates.”
“Street runners.”
He looked toward his men.
“Anyone who owes the Moretti name anything.”
Saul chambered the rifle.
“Orders?”
Dante turned.
City light framed him.
“Scorched earth.”
His voice became calm again.
“Burn the place down.”
He looked at Arya’s photograph.
“No one leaves alive.”
A pause.
“Except her.”
Back at the plant, Vinnie held the switchblade against Arya’s finger.
His patience had disappeared.
“Last chance.”
Sweat covered his forehead.
“How do I open the ledger?”
Arya closed her eyes.
She tried to retreat into memory before the blade came down.
Lorenzo.
A fragment.
A large man laughing.
Espresso.
A garden in Italy.
Hands lifting her into the air.
The ring.
Something about the wolf.
The wolf waits.
Vinnie pressed the knife.
Blood appeared.
“I count to 3.”
Arya trembled.
“1.”
“I don’t know.”
“2.”
The reinforced doors exploded.
The front entrance did not open.
It disappeared.
A concussive blast tore the steel doors from their hinges and sent smoke and debris through the kill floor.
Vinnie lost the knife.
He stumbled backward.
Gray smoke rolled into the building.
A figure emerged.
Dante Moretti.
No suit jacket.
White dress shirt rolled to the elbows.
A rifle in each hand.
Behind him came armed Moretti soldiers moving in formation.
“Rossi!”
Dante’s voice filled the warehouse.
Vinnie scrambled upright.
Dante stepped forward.
“Get away from her…”
His face was almost inhuman with fury.
“…before I carve your heart out with a spoon.”
Vinnie stared.
Only then did he understand what he had done.
He had not merely kidnapped a rival’s asset.
He had provoked Dante Moretti at the one point where control no longer existed.
“Kill them!”
Vinnie screamed.
“Kill every one of them!”
Gunmen on the catwalks opened fire.
The warehouse became a battlefield.
Automatic weapons flashed in darkness.
Rounds struck metal.
Concrete shattered.
Men screamed.
Dante did not retreat.
He advanced.
Short controlled bursts.
1 gunman fell from the railing.
Then another.
Dante moved directly toward Arya.
His eyes never left her.
Vinnie saw his own men collapsing.
He made the only move he believed could still protect him.
He grabbed Arya by the hair.
Pulled her from the chair.
His forearm locked around her throat.
The knife came back to her neck.
“You want her?”
Vinnie screamed.
“Come get her.”
Dante continued until approximately 20 yards remained.
Vinnie pressed the blade harder.
“1 more step…”
His voice broke.
“…and I open her throat.”
Dante stopped.
He discarded the empty rifles.
His hands hovered near the pistols at his waist.
For Arya, the room narrowed.
She saw Dante breathing hard.
Blood marked his shirt.
Rage covered his face.
But behind it she recognized something else.
Terror.
He had come.
He had actually come.
He had brought an army and turned the building into a war zone to reach her.
Vinnie dragged her backward.
His arm crushed her airway.
The serrated edge of the knife pressed beneath her jaw.
“Back off!”
Vinnie shouted.
“I swear I kill her.”
Dante drew 2 heavy pistols.
Gunfire still echoed around the building.
He fired twice toward the upper catwalk.
Bang.
Bang.
2 Rossi gunmen fell.
Dante did not look at them.
His gaze remained on Arya.
“There is nowhere to go, Vinnie.”
His voice was impossibly calm.
It sounded like a sentence already passed.
“Release her.”
Dante took another measured breath.
“I’ll make your death fast.”
A pause.
“Keep holding her…”
His eyes hardened.
“…and I make it last for days.”
“You think I’m stupid?”
Vinnie tightened his arm.
The blade cut Arya.
Warm blood moved down her neck.
“She’s my way out.”
His voice became hysterical.
“You want her.”
“Drop the guns.”
Dante stopped.
“Drop them or she dies.”
Time slowed for Arya.
The gunfire became distant.
She could feel Vinnie’s heartbeat against her back.
Fast.
Panicked.
For most of her life, Arya had been invisible.
A bus girl.
A debtor’s daughter.
A woman moved around by men with more power than she had.
In the previous 3 days, she had gone from 1 cage to another.
Threatened.
Protected.
Claimed.
Now Dante stood in front of her after walking through gunfire, ready to surrender whatever advantage he had because Vinnie’s knife touched her throat.
Something inside Arya changed.
Memory returned with unexpected clarity.
Palermo.
She was 5.
Thunder outside.
She sat on Lorenzo Valentinetti’s lap.
Her father held her small hand and touched the wolf engraved on the ring.
“The wolf is a hunter, Arya.”
His voice returned from 17 years earlier.
“But this wolf sleeps.”
His finger traced the metal.
“He wakes when the blood runs hot.”
“When the heart beats not because you are running…”
A pause.
“…but because you are ready to fight.”
Then:
“When you are ready to bite back.”
Arya opened her eyes.
Vinnie was distracted.
His attention moved between Dante and the exits.
The ring on her finger felt warm.
Then hotter.
Almost as if it carried a pulse of its own.
Arya did not scream.
She did not thrash blindly.
She waited.
Vinnie shifted his weight.
That was enough.
Arya lifted her right leg.
Then drove the heel of her expensive boot down onto Vinnie’s instep with everything she had.
Small bones broke.
Vinnie screamed.
His grip loosened.
Arya immediately threw her head backward.
May you like
The back of her skull struck his nose.
Wet crack.
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