Chapter 5 - The Blood in the Warehouse
By 4:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, the blizzard had paralyzed the entire Tri-State area. Eight inches of heavy, wind-blown snow covered the industrial shipping district of Elizabeth, New Jersey.
The docks were dark, deserted, and quiet, save for the deep, rhythmic groaning of massive cargo cranes swaying against the icy bay wind.
At Pier 14—a secluded, rusted dry-dock facility owned by a front company belonging to Carmine Valenti—a single brick warehouse was illuminated by two flickering halogen floodlights.
Inside the warehouse, the air was freezing, filled with the smell of diesel oil, wet concrete, and old copper.
Dominic Valenti—a thirty-five-year-old, heavily tattooed capo with a shaved head and a brutal, broken nose—sat in a wheelchair near a roaring kerosene heater. His left leg was wrapped in thick surgical bandages, elevated on a wooden crate.
Standing around him were six Valenti enforcers, dressed in heavy leather jackets, carrying automatic shotguns and pistols.
Dominic was furious. He was drinking straight bourbon from a bottle, cursing under his breath every time a throb of pain shot up his bandaged thigh.
“Where is the old man?” Dominic barked at one of his guards. “Carmine was supposed to be here an hour ago with the doctor!”
“The storm hit the Turnpike, Boss,” the guard replied, shivering in his coat. “Carmine’s motorcade is stuck near Newark. He told us to sit tight until he gets here.”
Dominic spat onto the oil-stained concrete floor. “Sitting tight in an unheated freezer. Great.”
He reached for his phone on the folding table beside his wheelchair.
Before his fingers touched the glass, the heavy steel security door at the far end of the warehouse exploded inward with a deafening, terrifying BOOM.
The steel door was ripped completely off its heavy industrial hinges by a breaching charge, flying twenty feet across the concrete floor, crashing into a stack of wooden pallets with a shower of sparks and splintered timber.
Before the echoes of the explosion died down, four flashbang grenades arc through the thick smoke, bouncing across the floor.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Blinding white light and four thousand decibels of concussive pressure detonated inside the enclosed warehouse.
The six Valenti guards screamed, dropping their weapons, clutching their eyes and bleeding ears, staggering blindly across the floorboards.
Then came the operators.
Ten men dressed in unmarked black tactical gear, night-vision goggles, and suppressed submachine guns poured through the smoke like shadows.
Pfft-pfft-pfft! Pfft-pfft-pfft!
The silent, double-tap pops of suppressed gunfire echoed through the room.
Within eight seconds, all six Valenti guards were on the concrete floor—shot precisely in the legs and shoulders, disarmed, immobilized, and groaning in agony. Not a single shot had been fatal, but every man was completely neutralized.
The thick gunsmoke slowly began to clear.
Walking slowly through the ruined doorway, his heavy combat boots crunching on the broken glass and splintered wood, was Gabriel Moretti.
He wore a dark wool tactical coat, black gloves, and his Sig Sauer P226 held low at his side. He didn't have a helmet on. His face was bare, his pale gray eyes glowing like cold silver beneath the flickering overhead lights.
Cole Mercer walked two paces behind him, flanked by two heavy operators holding tactical shotguns.
Dominic Valenti recoiled in his wheelchair, his face turning as white as the snow outside, his hand frantically reaching for the pistol on the folding table beside him.
Gabriel didn't run. He didn't scream.
He took three long strides across the concrete floor, kicked the folding table with his heavy boot, sending Dominic’s pistol flying thirty feet into the dark shadows of the warehouse.
Then Gabriel reached down, grabbed Dominic Valenti by his throat with his gloved hand, and lifted the two-hundred-pound capo out of his wheelchair, slamming his back against a heavy steel support pillar.
Dominic shrieked as the impact jolted his freshly operated gunshot wound, blood instantly seeping through his white surgical bandages.
“Gabriel!” Dominic choked out, his eyes wide with wild, unadulterated terror, his hands clawing at Gabriel’s wrist. “Gabriel... what the hell is this?! This is Valenti territory! You’re breaking the peace treaty! My father will start a war!”
Gabriel didn't answer right away. He squeezed Dominic’s throat just enough to shut off his air supply, letting the capo squirm and gasp for three long, agonizing seconds before easing the pressure slightly.
“You went to Lake Placid on Friday night, Dominic,” Gabriel said, his voice flat, low, and terrifyingly smooth.
Dominic’s eyes dilated with shock. “I... I don't know what you're talking about—”
Gabriel reached into his coat with his free hand, pulled out a tactical combat knife with a four-inch serrated blade, and drove the steel blade three inches deep into Dominic’s uninjured right thigh.
Dominic let out a blood-curdling scream that echoed off the high corrugated roof of the warehouse, his head snapping back against the steel pillar, tears and sweat pouring down his face.
“Don't lie to me, Dominic,” Gabriel whispered into his ear. “I don't have the patience for it today. You broke down the door of a cabin near Lake Placid. You shot at a woman named Natalie Hart.”
“It wasn't my idea!” Dominic sobbed, blood dripping from his leg onto Gabriel’s boot. “It was Carmine! My father ordered it! He’s been tracking her for six months!”
Gabriel leaned in closer, his gray eyes locking onto Dominic’s pupils like iron clamps.
“Why?” Gabriel asked softly. “Why would Carmine Valenti care about an artist living in the woods?”
Dominic was sobbing now, his body trembling violently from shock and pain.
“Because... because six months ago, one of our dirty cops in the Westchester building department saw her at a medical clinic in White Plains!” Dominic gasped out. “She was six months pregnant! She was using an alias, but the cop recognized her face from the file we kept on you!”
Gabriel felt the cold pressure in his chest tighten into an iron coil.
“Go on,” Gabriel commanded.
“Carmine... Carmine realized if she was pregnant with your child, that baby was the only heir the Moretti family would ever have!” Dominic cried, his breath ragged. “Carmine wanted the child! He wanted to take the baby, raise him in Jersey, or use him as leverage to make you surrender your shipping contracts in Brooklyn! If you didn't have an heir, your empire dies with you! If we controlled your son, we controlled you!”
Gabriel stared at the weeping capo.
The truth smashed into his mind like a physical blow.
Carmine Valenti hadn't tried to kill Natalie to hurt her. He had hunted her down to steal Gabriel’s child before Gabriel even knew the child existed.
And Natalie—wounded, terrified, hunted across the state—had realized what the Valentis were trying to do. She had kept the pregnancy secret for nine months, hidden in the mountain woods, and when Dominic smashed down her door, she had shot him in the leg, grabbed her six-day-old infant, and run for her life.
She hadn't brought the baby to Westchester to abandon him.
She had brought Daniel to the only man in New York capable of destroying the Valenti family to keep him safe.
“Where is she, Dominic?” Gabriel asked, his voice dropping into a register that made Cole Mercer take an involuntary step back. “Where is Natalie?”
“I don't know! I swear to God I don't know!” Dominic shrieked, clutching his wounded legs. “She shot me in the cabin! She took my car—my dark blue Ford Explorer! I had to call my crew to tow me out! We lost her on Route 9 during the blizzard! We thought she was heading to Manhattan!”
Gabriel pulled the combat knife out of Dominic’s thigh with a quick, brutal sweep. Dominic let out a weak, choked moan and sagged against the steel pillar.
Gabriel turned away from him, wiping the bloody blade clean on the lapel of a wounded Valenti guard’s jacket before sliding it back into his vest.
“Cole,” Gabriel said.
“Yes, Boss?”
“Call the perimeter team at the estate. Tell Dr. Shaw and Claire that the baby stays in the panic room until I return.”
“And what about Dominic?” Cole asked, looking down at the bleeding capo in the wheelchair.
Gabriel pulled his Sig Sauer P226 from its holster. He didn't look back at Dominic Valenti.
He raised the weapon, aimed casually over his shoulder without turning around, and fired a single round through the warehouse’s central power transformer hanging from the ceiling.
BANG!
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The transformer exploded in a shower of blue sparks, plunging the entire warehouse into total, pitch-black darkness.
“Leave them in the dark,” Gabriel commanded, his footsteps heavy and rhythmic as he walked out into the swirling snowstorm. “Carmine Valenti will be at the docks in thirty minutes. Let him find his son bleeding in the cold.”
