Chapter 3 - Blood Beneath the Harbor
Tomas steered the fishing boat west through the storm while Oyster Bay disappeared behind us.
The cabin smelled of diesel fuel, wet rope, and old coffee. Rosa wrapped a coarse wool blanket around my shoulders. Malik sat near the rear window, watching for pursuit with a rifle across his knees.
Dominic stood beside Tomas, issuing instructions into a secure satellite phone pulled from a metal emergency box.
He contacted no lieutenants.
No captains.
No family associates.
That told me how deeply the betrayal ran.
“We need somewhere outside the organization,” he said.
Tomas glanced at him. “There is one place.”
Dominic’s expression hardened.
“No.”
“It’s secure.”
“I said no.”
“Then choose another before the fuel runs out.”
Dominic looked toward me.
I raised an eyebrow. “Another secret?”
“An old debt.”
“Whose?”
“Mine.”
Tomas guided the boat toward a small marina near City Island. We abandoned it before sunrise and transferred to an unmarked delivery van waiting behind a seafood warehouse.
The driver was a gray-haired woman named June Mercer.
She wore work boots, a heavy coat, and a pistol openly on her hip.
When Dominic climbed into the van, she looked him over and said, “You look terrible.”
“Good morning to you too.”
Her eyes moved to me.
“So this is Elena.”
I stiffened.
June noticed.
“Relax. He spoke about you once.”
Dominic shot her a warning glance.
I leaned closer. “What did he say?”
“That you deserved better.”
The van went silent.
Dominic looked out the window.
June smiled faintly and started driving.
We crossed the Bronx as dawn broke under a sky the color of dirty steel. News reports on the radio mentioned an electrical fire at a private estate in Oyster Bay. No fatalities had been officially confirmed.
The Moretti machine was already hiding the truth.
June took us to an abandoned Catholic school in Yonkers that had been converted into a fortified safe house. Steel shutters covered the lower windows. Emergency generators hummed beneath the courtyard.
Inside, the old classrooms had become bedrooms, storage rooms, and an operations center.
June had once been a federal prosecutor. Dominic had saved her son during a kidnapping fourteen years earlier, before he became head of the Moretti family.
Apparently, loyalty existed beyond crime.
It simply had to be earned.
Rosa made coffee. Tomas checked the building. Malik slept in a chair with his weapon still in his hand.
Dominic entered the communications room and closed the door.
I followed.
Maps covered one wall. Several secure computers sat on a long desk. Dominic removed his torn shirt and began changing the bandage around his ribs.
“You need stitches,” I said.
“I’ve had worse.”
“That does not make this harmless.”
He looked at me.
“June has medical supplies.”
I cleaned the wound again while he sat on the edge of the desk.
Neither of us spoke for several minutes.
His skin was warm beneath my fingers.
Finally, I asked, “Why did you tell June I deserved better?”
His shoulders tightened.
“That was years ago.”
“Before or after our wedding?”
“After.”
I tied off the fresh bandage.
“How long after?”
“Four months.”
I stepped back.
Four months after our wedding, I had still been trying. I had waited for him to come home, planned dinners he missed, and convinced myself his distance was temporary.
“Why didn’t you give me better?”
His gaze dropped.
“Because I thought distance would protect you.”
“From what?”
“From me.”
I waited.
Dominic leaned his hands against the desk.
“My mother loved my father,” he said. “That was the weapon everyone used against her. Rivals threatened her. His men judged her. He controlled her because he was terrified of losing her. By the time he died, she had forgotten how to exist without him.”
“So you decided not to love your wife.”
“I decided not to make you vulnerable.”
“You made me lonely.”
“I know.”
The words were soft.
I looked at him.
“No, Dominic. You know now.”
He accepted the correction.
A computer chimed behind us.
June entered carrying a file.
“We found something.”
She placed surveillance images on the desk. They showed trucks entering the Brooklyn Navy Yard three nights earlier. One vehicle belonged to Moretti Shipping. Another was registered to a Rossi shell company.
“My father’s people were there,” I said.
June nodded. “But that isn’t the interesting part.”
She pointed to a grainy image of a man stepping from the Rossi vehicle.
He was broad-shouldered, silver-haired, and unmistakable.
My father.
Vittorio Rossi had rarely left his fortified Staten Island residence in recent years. He claimed his health was failing.
Yet there he stood at the Navy Yard at two in the morning.
Meeting Silas.
Dominic studied the photograph.
“Elena, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“He ordered you taken alive.”
“I heard.”
“He may believe he is protecting you.”
I turned on him.
“Do not excuse him.”
“I’m not.”
“He sold me into this marriage.”
“I agreed to it.”
“Yes, you did.”
Dominic absorbed the accusation without defense.
June opened another file.
“Container 404 was moved before the attack.”
“Where?” Dominic asked.
“That is the problem. The digital manifest shows it still at the Navy Yard. But traffic cameras recorded the truck leaving at ten-forty.”
“Destination?”
“Red Hook.”
I remembered something.
“My father owns a cold-storage warehouse there.”
Dominic looked at me.
“Through the Marzano Food Group,” I added. “It was one of his first laundering operations.”
June typed rapidly.
A property file appeared on-screen.
“The warehouse is still active.”
Dominic reached for his jacket.
I blocked him.
“You’re not going alone.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You do not know the building.”
“You do?”
“I visited it as a child. My father used to take me there on Sundays because he thought no one would suspect business meetings while his daughter ate ice cream in the office.”
“Elena—”
“You spent three years treating me as useless. You do not get to continue now that I have proved you wrong.”
June covered a smile.
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“It is dangerous.”
“So was my bedroom.”
That ended the argument.
We left after dark in June’s van. Dominic wore a plain black jacket and carried two pistols. I changed into jeans, boots, and a borrowed sweater.
It was the kind of clothing I had packed in my suitcase.
The suitcase itself was probably ash by now.
Red Hook’s waterfront was nearly deserted. Fog drifted between warehouses. The old cold-storage building stood beside a narrow inlet, its loading bays dark.
June remained in the van while Dominic and I approached through an alley.
“You stay behind me,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“If I say run, you run.”
“I know.”
“And if we are separated—”
“I know, Dominic.”
He looked at me.
“Do you?”
His concern was almost painful to witness.
“Yes,” I said more gently. “I do.”
We entered through a side door with a rusted lock.
Inside, refrigeration units hummed beneath fluorescent lights. Rows of stacked crates formed narrow corridors.
I remembered the office upstairs.
But container 404 would not fit inside the building unless the rear loading wall had been opened.
I led Dominic toward the old packaging floor.
Voices came from beyond a plastic curtain.
We crouched behind crates.
My father stood near the center of the room with six armed men. Beside him was Deputy Commissioner Alden, sweating inside an expensive coat.
Container 404 rested behind them.
My father looked older than he had in the surveillance photo. His silver hair was thinner, his face pale. But his eyes remained hard.
Alden held a metal case.
“You promised me the archive,” he said.
“And you promised Moretti would die,” my father replied.
“The attack failed because Sterling lost control.”
“Silas is dead.”
“Then your daughter is with Dominic.”
My father’s face changed.
“Dominic will use her.”
Alden scoffed. “He ignored her for three years.”
“That was before he understood her value.”
I felt Dominic’s gaze on me.
My father continued, “Elena remembers everything. Names, accounts, dates. Her mother was the same.”
My breath caught.
My mother had died when I was twelve. I had been told it was an aneurysm.
Alden opened the metal case. “Then we find her.”
“And Dominic?”
“Kill him.”
Dominic shifted beside me.
I touched his arm, warning him to wait.
My father approached the container and entered a code into its lock.
The doors opened.
Inside were steel filing cabinets, hard drives, photographs, and shelves of labeled recordings.
Decades of corruption.
Enough evidence to destroy both empires.
Alden smiled.
“New York belongs to whoever controls that.”
“No,” my father said. “New York belongs to whoever destroys it.”
He raised a gun and shot Alden in the chest.
Chaos erupted.
Alden’s guards fired at Rossi’s men. Dominic pulled me behind the crates as bullets tore through the warehouse.
My father took cover beside the container.
Dominic fired twice, dropping one guard.
“Stay here,” he ordered.
He moved into the fight.
I watched men scatter between crates. Lights shattered overhead. Cold air filled with sparks and gun smoke.
Then I saw my father running toward a side exit with a hard drive under his arm.
I followed.
“Elena!” Dominic shouted.
But I was already through the door.
My father reached the waterfront.
“Stop!”
He turned.
For one brief second, surprise softened his face.
“Little star.”
He had called me that when I was a child.
“Did you order the attack?”
His expression became tired.
“I ordered them to bring you home.”
“They tried to kill my husband.”
“He is not your husband. He is your jailer.”
“You arranged the marriage.”
“To keep you alive.”
“From whom?”
“From the people who killed your mother.”
The waterfront seemed to tilt.
“My mother died of an aneurysm.”
“No. She discovered the archive. She wanted to expose everything.”
My father’s voice broke on the final word.
“Dominic’s father had her killed.”
I could not breathe.
Behind me, footsteps approached.
Dominic appeared in the doorway, gun raised.
My father aimed at him.
They stood facing each other across the wet pavement.
“Elena,” Dominic said, “step away from him.”
My father’s eyes never left Dominic.
“Ask him what his father did.”
“I didn’t know,” Dominic said.
“Liar,” my father hissed.
“I found out after my father died.”
I turned toward Dominic.
“You knew?”
His silence answered.
Pain tore through me.
“You knew how my mother died?”
“I knew there were suspicions.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I was trying to verify it.”
“For how long?”
He did not answer.
My father laughed bitterly.
“There is your marriage, little star. Another Moretti silence.”
Sirens sounded in the distance.
June had called authorities loyal to her.
My father backed toward the pier.
“Come with me, Elena.”
I looked at the man who had controlled my entire life and the husband who had hidden the truth.
Both claimed to protect me.
Both had decided I could not be trusted with my own choices.
“No,” I said.
My father’s face fell.
Dominic lowered his weapon slightly.
Then a wounded guard emerged behind him and raised a rifle.
I saw the movement before Dominic did.
I ran toward him.
The rifle fired.
Dominic turned, knocking me aside as the bullet struck him high in the shoulder.
He fell.
I grabbed his pistol from the pavement and fired at the guard.
The man collapsed.
When I looked back, my father was gone.
Only the dark water moved beside the pier.
I dropped beside Dominic and pressed my hands against the blood spreading over his jacket.
His eyes struggled to focus.
“You should have run,” he whispered.
“You should have told me the truth.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to die before I decide whether to forgive you.”
A faint smile touched his mouth.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sirens grew louder.
I held him as rain began falling again.
For the first time in our marriage, Dominic rested his head against me not as a ruler, protector, or feared criminal.
May you like
Only as a wounded man.
And despite everything, I could not let him go.
