28: The Ghost of Pier 12

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

POV: Dante Moretti

I stood on the edge of Pier 12, the wind whipping my coat around my legs like a shroud. The docks were a skeleton of steel and shadows, the massive cranes looming over us like prehistoric beasts.

Marco brought Julian to me. He looked small in the vast expanse of the shipping yard, his hair wet from the rain, his face pale but defiant. He didn't look like a traitor. He looked like the man I had married the man who thought he could carry the world on his shoulders without asking for help.

"I had Marco follow you," I said, my voice barely audible over the crashing of the waves against the pilings. "I watched the footage from the Blue Velvet. I saw you hand over the drive, Julian."

Julian stood five feet away, his hands buried in his pockets. "I did what I had to do, Dante."

"You sold my father the access codes to my empire!" I roared, the sound echoing through the empty containers. I moved toward him, my hands gripping his shoulders with a force that made him wince. "You went behind my back to deal with the Maltese. Why? Was the money not enough? Was the throne not big enough?"

"It wasn't about the money!" Julian shouted back, his eyes flashing with a desperate, fierce fire. "Your father was going to give those codes to them anyway! He was using Pietro to subvert your Capos! I didn't sell the real codes, Dante! I sold them a trap!"

I froze, my grip loosening. "A trap?"

"The 'Poison Codes'," Julian whispered, his breathing ragged. "They lead to a ghost server. The moment they use them, the feds get a map of the entire Malta network. It wipes out your father’s leverage and the Syndicate in one move. I was trying to save you from the choice of having to kill your own father."

I looked at him, the fury in my chest slowly being replaced by a cold, hollow realization. He had risked his life his soul to protect me from a moral debt I didn't even know how to pay.

"Julian..." I started, but the words died in my throat.

Suddenly, a red laser dot appeared on the crate next to Julian’s head.

"Get down!" I screamed, tackling him to the wet concrete just as a high-powered rifle round shattered the steel where he had been standing.

From the top of the gantry crane, a figure emerged. It wasn't the Maltese. It was Pietro Rossi. And standing next to him, leaning on his wolf-headed cane, was my father.

"You were always too soft for him, Dante!" Vincenzo’s voice boomed over the wind, amplified by the industrial acoustics. "The boy is a snake! He thinks he can outplay the Old World with his digital tricks! But the Old World still knows how to pull a trigger!"

"Father, stop!" I yelled, shielding Julian with my body.

"The boy dies tonight, Dante!" Vincenzo screamed. "And then you will realize that blood is the only thing that matters! Pietro, finish it!"

Pietro leveled the rifle. I reached for my gun, but I knew I was too slow. We were in a kill zone with no cover.

Then, a second shot rang out. Not from the crane. From the darkness of the warehouse behind us.

Pietro’s head snapped back, and he tumbled from the gantry, falling sixty feet into the dark water below.

I spun around, my gun raised. Emerging from the shadows was a man I hadn't seen in weeks. A man who was supposed to be a broken, bandaged memory.

Leo Vane.

He was gaunt, his arm in a sling, but his eyes were clear. He held a suppressed sniper rifle in his good hand, resting it on a crate.

"I told you I’d look out for him, Moretti," Leo rasped, looking at Julian. "Even if I have to save him from his own husband's mess."

Vincenzo looked down from the crane, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. He saw his hitman dead. He saw a Vane protecting a Moretti. The world he knew the world of "purity" and "old blood" was dying in front of him.

He raised his cane, shaking it at us like a fallen king. Then, he clutched his chest, his face contorting in pain. He stumbled, his cane slipping on the wet steel.

"Father!" I cried out.

He fell. Not into the water, but backwards, onto the catwalk of the crane. He lay there, a small, dark shadow against the night sky, the life finally fleeing the body that had caused so much pain.

The silence that followed was absolute.

I looked at Julian. He was covered in oil and rainwater, his eyes wide with shock. I looked at Leo, who simply nodded once before disappearing back into the shadows of the warehouse.

The war for the family was over. The Old Butcher was dead. The Vane debt was, in a strange way, repaid by a brother who had finally chosen a side.

I pulled Julian up, holding him against me as the first sirens began to wail in the distance.

"Is it over?" Julian whispered.

"It’s over," I said, looking out at the city. "The ghosts are gone. Now, we just have to rule what’s left."