Chapter 3 - The Cold Wake
The impact was a muffled roar, like a cannon firing underwater.
Ice-cold seawater rushed through the shattered front grill, instantly flooding the floorboards and soaking Lorenzo’s custom trousers. The pressure against the doors made them impossible to push open. The electrical system short-circuited in a shower of blue sparks, plunging the cabin into absolute darkness except for the flickering green glow of the sinking dashboard lights.
Lorenzo didn't panic. Panic was a luxury dead men afforded.
He unbuckled his seatbelt with practiced precision, kicking his heavy shoes off with his heels. Water was already up to his chest, freezing and paralyzing. Through the murky water rushing past the windshield, he saw Damian kicking open the driver’s side window—having already loosened the latch before the impact—and slipping out into the dark current like a shadow.
Damian had planned every second.
Lorenzo took one deep, final breath of the dwindling air pocket near the roof, planted his stockinged feet against the glove compartment, and drove his shoulder upward into the reinforced side window.
Crack.
The glass spiderwebbed. He hit it again, harder, ignoring the hot lance of pain in his ribs where the old bullet wound had been.
Crash.
The water rushed in with the force of a tidal wave, dragging him out into the freezing black depths. He kicked upward toward the faint, distant shimmer of the surface, his lungs burning as if they were filled with hot coals.
When his head finally broke the surface, he gasped, sucking in the salt air. The rain was still lashing the dark water into choppy waves. About fifty yards away, a small inflatable Zodiac boat with a silent electric motor was idling. A figure in a dark wetsuit was hauling himself aboard.
Damian.
Lorenzo didn't call out. He didn't waste his breath. He swam toward the crumbling concrete pilings of an abandoned warehouse pier, using long, steady strokes to keep his freezing limbs moving. The current fought him every inch of the way, pulling him toward the open sea, but sheer willpower kept him driving forward.
By the time he dragged himself onto the slimy, barnacle-encrusted wooden beams of the pier, his muscles were shaking uncontrollably from hypothermia. He collapsed onto the rough wood, coughing up saltwater, his vision blurring at the edges.
He was alive. But to the rest of the world, Lorenzo Duca was at the bottom of Greyhaven harbor.
And in the criminal underworld, a dead Don was an invitation for a bloodbath.
Back at the Duca mansion, three miles away, three-year-old Emma Navarro bolted straight up in her narrow bed in the staff quarters, her hazel eyes wide open in the dark.
Sophia, who had been sitting at the small wooden desk reviewing her old nursing textbooks by the light of a single desk lamp, hurried over.
"What is it, baby? Did you have a bad dream?" Sophia whispered, stroking the child's tangled brown hair.
Emma clutched her gray stuffed rabbit tight against her chest, her small nose twitching as she sniffed the air of the bedroom.
"Uncle Duca is wet," Emma whispered, her voice trembling. "He's cold. And someone poured sour milk on his coat."
Sophia froze. She looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was 2:14 AM.
"Emma, go back to sleep. Mr. Duca is at a business meeting downtown."
"No," Emma insisted, staring stubbornly toward the window where the rain beat against the glass. "He's sinking. And the man who smells like mint and old paper pushed him."
Sophia’s breath caught in her throat. Mint and old paper. That was Damian Rossi’s signature scent—he always chewed imported mint gum and carried old leather-bound ledgers.
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"How do you know that, sweetie?" Sophia asked, her heart beginning to hammer against her ribs.
"Because bad things have a heavy smell," Emma said simply, lying back down and pulling the blanket up to her chin. "We have to go find him, Mama. Before the hospital men get him."
