He turned his hand over, intertwining his fingers with hers. “They won’t just die. By the time I’m finished, they’ll beg God for the mercy I’m going to withhold. We get Lily, we get Thomas, and then we burn this empire to the ground.
”
They descended into the prohibition-era liquor shaft. The air grew damp, smelling of old earth. Above them, the muffled thumps of Damian’s guards patrolling. They reached the wine cellar.
The main garage was guarded by four men with long rifles. “We can’t go that way,” Sophia said. “We aren’t taking a car. ” Mateo navigated to the deepest corner, pressed his thumb against a biometric scanner behind a bottle of Château Lafite.
The iron rack swung open, revealing a hidden armory—rifles, Kevlar, encrypted phones. “Grab a vest. ” He stripped off his Brioni jacket, strapped into a shoulder rig with twin suppressed Glocks, and slammed a magazine into a compact Sig Sauer MPX. Sophia mirrored him, pulling a plate carrier over her maid’s uniform.
“You have a way out? ” she asked. “Drainage tunnel. Half a mile down the coastline.
I’ve got an off-the-books Audi RS6 stashed near the exit. Damian doesn’t know about it. ”
He paused. “Once we’re out, you can walk away.
I’ll bring Thomas back. ”
She met his eyes. “I’m not walking away until I see my brother breathe free air and Damian’s empire burn. ”
He nodded.
“Stay close. Don’t hesitate. ”
He pushed open the heavy steel door, leading them into the pitch-black drainage pipe. The ocean roared against the cliffs, masking their footsteps.
Pier 40 loomed out of the rain, a rusted behemoth jutting into the Hudson. Through his thermal scope, Matteo counted four guards by the loading docks. Sloppy. They thought their boss had won.
“Cameras? ” he murmured into his earpiece. “Two on the roof, one panning the loading bay,” Sophia replied from the passenger seat of the Audi, hacking the feed. “Give me ten seconds.
” A tap. “Done. Three-minute window. ”
He slipped out, moving like a phantom across the rain-slicked concrete.
The first two guards died without a sound—combat knife to the base of the skull, then a brutal strike to the carotid. The remaining two turned at the scuffle. Two muffled shots from his Glock dropped them into the dark water below. He breached the side door.
The warehouse smelled of brine and diesel, crates stacked three stories high. He headed for the freight elevator to the sublevels. Sophia slipped in behind him. “The holding cells are through the boiler room.
”
They moved down a dim corridor. Two enforcers stepped out of a side office. Matteo raised the Sig, fired a short controlled burst. They dropped before their weapons cleared holsters.
He kicked open the boiler room door. The heat was oppressive, sulfur thick in the air. Along the far wall, reinforced steel cages flickered in fluorescent light. “Lily!
” He rushed to the second cage. His sister huddled in the corner, tangled blonde hair, face tear-streaked. At his voice, she scrambled to the bars. “Mateo, they said you were dead.
”
“I’ve got you. ” He snapped the padlock with a tungsten cutter, pulled her into a fierce embrace. A gasp from the end of the room. Sophia knelt in front of the last cage.
Inside, a young man slumped against the wall—bruised, bloody, but breathing. “Tommy. ” Her voice broke. Thomas groaned, eyes fluttering open.
When he focused on Sophia, terror washed over his face. “Soph? What are you doing here? ”
Mateo moved down, snapped Thomas’s lock, helped the injured man to his feet.
“Wait,” Thomas rasped, gripping Mateo’s vest. “I didn’t just find out about Damian’s embezzlement. I found out about her. Camila.
Her name isn’t Rossi. It’s Moretti. She’s Don Lorenzo Moretti’s bastard daughter from Naples. The whole engagement was a Trojan horse.
The Moretti cartel wanted to decapitate your syndicate from the inside. ”
The boiler room fell silent save for the roaring furnaces. Mateo felt the floor tilt. Camila hadn’t just been sleeping with his right-hand man.
She was the heir to his father’s oldest rival. Every kiss, every promise—a calculated maneuver. A dark, terrifying calm washed over him. Nothing left to lose.
An entire world to destroy. “We need to go,” Sophia urged, supporting her brother. “They’ll realize the perimeter guards are missing. ”
“Take them to the Audi.
” He handed her the keys. “Safe house in Montauk. GPS is programmed. ”
“What about you?
” Lily asked. Mateo turned to a massive array of natural gas pipes feeding the boilers. He pulled a block of C4 and a digital detonator from his pouch, slapped it onto the main pressure valve. “I’m going to leave a message.
”
He set the timer for five minutes. As the matte black Audi tore away from Pier 40, a blinding flash of orange lit the Manhattan skyline. The shockwave shattered the night, reducing Damian’s smuggling hub to twisted metal and ash. Standing on the shoreline, watching the flames reflect in his cold blue eyes, Matteo pulled out his satellite phone.
It was time to go to war.