Chapter 4 - Ghosts of the Past
The name echoed through the floorboards, pulling a sharp, sudden gasp from the shadows of Vincent’s memory.
Salvatore.
The voice belonged to Salvatore Moretti, a capo Vincent had ordered executed three years ago after discovering he was skimming millions from the docks. The man had supposedly taken a cement-shoe ride to the bottom of the harbor while the city slept. Yet here he was, screaming orders in the middle of a frozen wasteland fifteen hundred miles away from New York, holding Vincent’s betrayer at gunpoint.
Vincent pushed past Elena, ignoring the burning pain tearing through his ribs, and hauled himself up the first rung of the ladder until his eyes were level with the floor cracks.
Through the splintered gap in the kitchen wall, the clearing outside looked like a war zone. Marcus stood with his hands raised beside his SUV, his tactical vest dusted with fresh snow, staring down the barrel of a customized Remington shotgun held by a heavily scarred man standing near the treeline. Three other men in unmarked heavy parkas flanked Salvatore, their weapons locked firmly on Marcus’s strike team.
“You’re a hard man to kill, Sal,” Marcus snarled, his voice tight with controlled panic as he tried to angle his body toward his holster. “The boss said you went down in fifty feet of water.”
“The boss is an arrogant prick who didn't check who owned the harbor police,” Salvatore laughed, a harsh, grating sound that cut through the wind. “And look at you now—you thought you could put a bullet in Vincent’s back, take over the syndicate, and play kingpin without paying the vig to the old guard? You’re a rookie, Marcus. You left Vincent’s body in the snow like an amateur, and now the whole board is up for grabs.”
Down in the cellar, Vincent’s jaw tightened until his teeth clicked. So Marcus didn't finish the job because he thought I was already dead. The realization was a bitter pill. His own hand-picked successor hadn't even bothered to check a pulse; he had simply shot him in the dark and driven away, assuming the winter elements would do the dirty work for him.
“Kill him,” Vincent whispered so softly that even Elena, standing right beside him, barely caught the words.
“What?” she whispered back, her eyes wide in the dark.
“Salvatore is going to execute Marcus right now,” Vincent said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion, cold and absolute as winter steel. “And then he’s going to hunt through this cabin looking for my corpse so he can take my ring and claim the throne. If we stay down here, we die with them.”
“Then we don't stay down here,” Elena said. She reached behind a stack of wooden crates and pulled out a heavy burlap sack, dropping it onto the floor with a dull, metallic clink.
Vincent looked down. Inside the torn sack lay an old-school Remington 870 trench gun with a sawed-off stock, three boxes of heavy buckshot, and a combat knife with a twelve-inch blade.
“Where did you get that?” Vincent asked, his eyebrows lifting in genuine surprise.
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“Like I said,” Elena replied, racking a shell into the chamber with a sharp, lethal chck-clack that echoed in the tiny cellar. “I’m more afraid of people than wolves. Are you coming, or do you want to die hiding under my floorboards like a rat?”
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