Chapter 6 - The Iron Resolve
Fay didn't scream. She slammed the magazine into the open well of my Colt with the heel of her hand, her knuckles bleeding from the broken glass on the desk.
I hit the slide release. The heavy steel chamber slammed forward, stripping a fresh .45 round into the battery with a sharp, oiled crack.
Johnny never got the shot off.
I brought the barrel up and fired once, straight through the center of his throat. He dropped the Glock, clutched his neck with both hands, and collapsed heavily against the doorframe, his boots drumming frantically against the floorboards for five seconds before falling completely still.
Gunsmoke hung in the study like a greasy blue fog, smelling of sulfur, burned powder, and hot copper.
Plaster dust was still drifting down from the shattered ceiling, settling on Carmine's motionless body where he lay sprawled across the threshold. The blast from his shotgun had shredded the crystal chandelier; glittering shards covered the rug like crushed ice.
Fay remained on her knees beside my right wheel, her chest heaving, her hands covered in gray dust and streaks of red from where the broken glass had scored her palms.
"Fay," I said, my voice rough and vibrating with adrenaline. "Are you hit?"
She looked down at her clothes, then up at me. Her grey eyes were wide, the pupils dilated until they were almost black, but she wasn't crying.
"No," she whispered. Her voice was cracked, but steady. "No. Just glass."
I let out a long, ragged breath, my fingers easing their death grip on the Colt. The withdrawal tremors that had plagued me all afternoon had completely vanished, burned away by the raw surge of survival.
"You stayed," I said, looking down at her. "You could have gone down the storm hatch."
Fay stood up slowly, her knees shaking, but she forced herself upright. She wiped her bloody palm against the denim of her jeans, leaving a dark smear.
"If I ran, he would've killed you," she said simply. "And then he would've hunted me down anyway. Men like that don't leave witnesses who can describe what shoes they were wearing."
She looked at Carmine's body in the doorway, then stepped carefully over the pooling blood to kick Johnny's dropped Glock toward my desk.
"How many more are outside?" she asked.
"Three," I said, my tactical instincts taking over before the shock could settle in. "Carmine brought six men total. Rocco and Johnny are down. That leaves three in the courtyard or at the gates."
As if on cue, the low, rhythmic crack of suppressed gunfire echoed from the front driveway, followed by the heavy crunch of tires on wet gravel.
I raised the Colt, my thumb resting on the hammer.
Ten seconds later, heavy boots echoed through the hallway. A tall, broad-shouldered silhouette appeared in the smoky doorway, stepping over Carmine's body without breaking stride.
It was Luca.
He was wearing his long black cashmere overcoat, soaked from the rain, holding a silenced Beretta at his side. Behind him were four men from the old guard—men who had served my father twenty years ago and who took their orders exclusively from Luca's ledger.
Luca took one look at Carmine, another at Johnny, and then let his sharp, watery blue eyes settle on me sitting behind the desk.
"You look like hell, Dominic," Luca said, his voice completely dry.
"You took your time," I said, lowering the Colt to the desk.
"Traffic on the bridge was terrible," Luca replied, stepping into the room. He glanced down at Fay, taking in her bloody hands, her torn sweater, and the empty magazine well she had just loaded under fire. "This the Willis girl?"
"She saved my life," I said.
Luca nodded once, a gesture of immense weight coming from a man who had buried fifty associates without blinking. "Good. We’ll need people who don't run when the glass breaks. We found Dr. Mercer at the airport in Philadelphia. He’s in the basement of the cold storage locker right now. He brought his personal ledgers with him to negotiate for his skin."
"What’s in the ledgers?" I asked.
"Sal Leone paid for the whole operation," Luca said, stepping closer to the desk. "Carmine wasn't working on ambition alone. Sal promised him forty percent of the north docks and full protection from the Brooklyn families if he cleared you off the board before the commission met on Friday."
I looked down at my hands. They were steady now. The poison was fading, and for the first time in six months, the fog of self-pity had completely lifted.
"Where is Sal right now?" I asked.
"At his social club on Eighth Street," Luca said. "He’s waiting for Carmine’s phone call confirming the hit. When Carmine doesn't call, he’ll know the play failed. By midnight, he’ll have fifty men surrounding his block."
"Then we don't give him until midnight," I said.
I unlocked the brakes on my chair, spun around the debris, and wheeled myself out from behind the desk, stopping directly in front of Luca.
"Get the medical kit out of my car," I told Luca. "Have your driver bring up the heavy sedan with the ramp. We're going to Eighth Street."
Luca frowned, his thick gray eyebrows drawing together. "Dominic, you just survived a gunfight in your own study. You're barely off those neuro-blockers. You can't roll into Sal Leone's club in a chair."
"I'm not rolling into the club to negotiate, Luca," I said, my voice dropping into a register that made the four guards in the hallway straighten their spines. "I'm going there to show the commission that the head of the Corso family doesn't die when you cut his brakes."
I turned my chair toward Fay.
She was standing near the fireplace, watching me with that same quiet, unshakeable intensity she had shown since the moment she walked into my room with a bucket of oatmeal.
"Fay," I said.
"I'm coming with you," she said before I could speak.
Luca let out a sharp scoff. "Dominic, this is mafia business. We don't take maids to a sit-down."
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"She’s not the maid anymore," I said, looking Luca dead in the eye until the old man looked away. "She’s the only person in this house who didn't sell me out for fifty grand. Clean your hands, Fay. You're riding in the front seat."
***
