Chapter 8 - THE RECKONING AT DAWN
The first grey light of dawn was breaking over the bayou when the first shots shattered the silence of the marsh.
Crack. Crack-crack.
Submachine gun fire chewed through the outer security gates, sending splinters of wood and chunks of stone flying into the mist.
Down in the courtyard, Marco Greco’s men returned fire with disciplined, measured precision. Flash-bangs echoed across the water, turning the pale morning mist into blinding white strobes of light.
Inside the mansion’s reinforced study, Salvatore stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, holding an encrypted satellite radio in one hand and a carbine in the other. His face was a mask of cold, absolute focus.
“Marco report,” Salvatore barked into the radio.
“Front gate breached, boss!” Marco’s voice crackled through the static over the sound of gunfire. “Three men down, but they brought heavy ordnance. They’re pushing through the east garden!”
“Fall back to the secondary perimeter at the porch,” Salvatore ordered. “Draw them into the kill zone.”
“Copy that.”
Salvatore clicked the radio off, his jaw tight. He turned toward the double doors of the study, where Iris stood holding a medical kit and a heavy iron fire poker she had grabbed from the hearth. She wasn't shaking. Her eyes were sharp and clear.
“They’re inside the perimeter,” Iris said.
“Stay behind the reinforced steel core of this room,” Salvatore commanded, stepping forward to check the heavy deadbolt on the study door. “Gia is safe in the panic room upstairs. If anything happens to me—”
“Nothing is going to happen to you, Salvatore Mancini,” Iris interrupted, grabbing the lapels of his shirt and pulling him down so she could kiss him hard and fast on the lips. “Because I just put your heart back together, and I’ll be damned if you let someone else break it.”
Salvatore let out a sudden, dark laugh—a sound full of absolute devotion and lethal resolve.
“Watch me,” he murmured.
He turned, opened the heavy study door, and stepped out into the hallway just as the front double doors of the mansion were blown inward with a deafening blast.
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What followed was twenty minutes of controlled, terrifying warfare. Salvatore moved through the hallways of his home like a ghost, his tactical training from decades ago taking over. Men who had come to burn his empire to the ground found themselves trapped in a maze of crossfire orchestrated by Marco and led by a boss who had everything to fight for.
By the time the sun fully crested the horizon, the silence of the bayou returned, broken only by the crackle of distant sirens approaching from the main highway—local police finally answering the federal priority codes Marco had triggered an hour earlier.
