Chapter 25
ALESSANDRO
I’m reviewing final positioning reports in my office when the windows rattle and the distant boom rolls across the city like thunder. My head snaps up. “What the fuck?”
My secure phone erupts with incoming calls even as I rush toward the window, watching an orange glow bloom against the darkness in the direction of…
No.
In the direction of the DeLuca compound.
“Fuck,” I breathe, nearly swaying on my feet. “They beat us to it.”
The second explosion follows six seconds later.
This one is closer, the shockwave strong enough to set off car alarms throughout my neighborhood.
Through the reinforced glass, I can see the Irish stronghold burning like a torch against the night sky, flames licking up into the darkness as sirens begin wailing in the distance.
My phone buzzes with Bianca’s number, and I answer before the first ring finishes.
“Alessandro!” Her voice cuts through static and background chaos—gunfire, shouting, the roar of flames. “They fucking hit us first! They hit us at the same fucking time!” There’s a pause before she screams, “FUCK!”
“How bad?” I’m already grabbing my gear, my ribs protesting as I pull on body armor over my shirt. The wound still aches like hell, but adrenaline is already drowning out the pain. Fuck it. It’ll have to do until this is over. I’ll deal with my doctor bitching me out later.
“Bad,” Bianca says frantically. “There’s at least forty shooters at the compound, probably more at Siobhan’s place.” She pauses and for a moment I think I lost her. “But we’re not going down easy,” she finally says.
Muzzle flashes light up the night like deadly fireworks. The Calabreses have turned lower Manhattan into a war zone, but if they think surprise will be enough to destroy us, they’re about to learn exactly how wrong they are.
“I’m mobilizing my people,” I tell her, as I rush back to my desk and push the emergency button, letting my men know it’s time. “Where do you need us?”
“Split your forces,” she commands without hesitation, and I feel a surge of pride at her confident tone. “Half to the compound, half to help Siobhan. We can’t let them break either position.”
“And you?” I ask as I hear voices and doors slamming outside my office. My men are arriving. Good.
“I’m coordinating from the war room. Matteo’s handling direct defense while I run the bigger picture.” I hear something slam in the background and it sounds like Bianca’s hand slapping on a table. “They want a fucking war? We’ll give them a fucking war,” she snarls.
The line goes dead, and I’m left staring at my phone for exactly two seconds before I snap out of it. I’ve got twenty-four men spread across three locations in Manhattan, plus another dozen on standby. Against forty-plus Calabrese soldiers, we’re outnumbered but not outclassed.
Time to even the odds.
“Tony!” I shout as I wrench open the door and see my man there. “Emergency deployment! All teams, full weapons, converge on my location in five minutes!”
Tony nods. “Copy that, boss. What’s the situation?”
“The Calabreses just declared war on all of us,” I growl, taking the stairs three at a time, grunting as it jostles my ribs. “And we’re going to show them exactly why that was a mistake.”
I push open the front door and stop dead in my tracks.
The streets are chaos.
As my convoy races through lower Manhattan toward the compound, I can see the scope of what Dominic has unleashed.
This is an all-out assault designed to cripple every major ally the DeLucas have in a single night.
“We were too late,” I murmur to myself, my heart sinking all the way to my damn toes. “Fucking hell. We were too late.”
Smoke billows from at least six different locations, the night sky painted orange with fires that I can smell even through the armored glass of our vehicles.
But what strikes me most isn’t the destruction—it’s the resistance.
Every burning building, every explosion, every barrage of gunfire represents a position that’s still fighting back. The Calabreses may have achieved surprise, but they underestimated something crucial: the DeLucas don’t break easily, and neither do their allies.
“Boss, we’ve got multiple police units moving in from the north,” reports my driver, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he navigates around abandoned cars and debris. “They’re trying to establish a perimeter.”
“Expected but annoying,” I mutter, scanning the display on my tablet. “NYPD protocol for gang warfare is to contain and wait for federal backup. They won’t interfere directly unless civilians are at immediate risk.”
Which gives us maybe two hours before the situation becomes untenable. Two hours to turn this ambush into a victory, or we’ll all be dead or in federal custody by dawn.
And both are distinctly unappealing.
My comm crackles to life with reports from my teams as they spread across the battlefield.
Half of them are heading to support Siobhan’s people at the Irish stronghold, and the other half are coming with me to reinforce the compound.
The discipline in their voices makes me proud.
There’s no panic, no confusion, just professional soldiers adapting to changing circumstances.
“Team Alpha, approaching the Irish position. Heavy resistance, but they’re holding the main building,” a voice rings out.
“Team Bravo, two minutes out. Looks like the Calabreses have them pinned in the east wing,” another voice says, cursing.
“All teams, be advised—enemy numbers are higher than initial estimates,” another voice chimes in. “We’re looking at sixty-plus hostiles across all locations.”
I nearly drop my comm. Sixty. Fucking Christ. Dominic is planning to exterminate us all.
The compound comes into view as we round the final corner, and what I see makes me want to rage. The main building is scarred with bullet holes and scorch marks, several outbuildings are completely ablaze.
“Holy fuck,” my driver breathes as the car screeches to a halt. My mouth dries. I never thought I would see the day that the DeLuca mansion has been breached. To me, it’s always been as impenetrable as the family itself.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“There,” I point toward the east wing where flashes bloom like deadly flowers in the darkness. “That’s where they’ve got Matteo’s people pinned for now.”
“Fucking idiots,” one of my men snarls through the comms.
He’s not wrong. The Calabreses have superior numbers and the advantage of surprise, but they’ve made a critical error.
They’ve allowed themselves to be drawn into a prolonged siege instead of achieving quick victory.
Every minute this battle continues favors the defenders, who know the terrain and have motivation beyond just following orders.
“Alessandro!” The voice cuts through the gunfire as I deploy my teams around the compound’s perimeter. I turn to see Bella emerging from a defensive position near the main house, her face streaked with soot and her hands on an assault rifle that looks incongruous in her artist’s grip.
I don’t know why it always shocks me to see Bella DeLuca handle a gun.
She’s proved herself to be an excellent shot, especially since she’s the one who took down Johnny Calabrese.
The moment I heard of his passing, I opened up a bottle of scotch I had been saving and toasted to the DeLuca donna for ridding the world of a piece of shit.
Here’s hoping I can take another shot of scotch once we get rid of Dominic fucking Calabrese.
“Where’s Bianca?” I shout back, taking cover behind an overturned vehicle as bullets spark off the concrete around us. “And the children?”
“The children are in the safe room with their nanny. Bianca is in the war room. She’s been coordinating our response since the attack started.” Bella’s voice carries fierce pride even as she returns fire at targets I can’t see. “Alessandro, you should see her work. It’s magnificent.”
I plan on seeing it for myself.
I signal my teams to begin their assault on the Calabrese positions, then work my way toward the main building through cover that consists mostly of burning debris and abandoned vehicles.
The compound has been transformed into something from a war movie—broken glass, bullet holes, and the acrid smell of cordite mixing with smoke from a dozen different fires.
But underlying it all is something else: the sound of an organization that refuses to break.
I make it to the war room and it is what I expected—organized chaos that somehow manages to maintain coherence despite the circumstances.
Maps cover every surface, marked with red and blue pins that track friendly and enemy positions in real time.
Radio chatter fills the air as reports come in from across the battlefield, and in the center of it all stands Bianca.
If this wasn’t a life or death situation, I would whistle appreciatively.
She’s wearing black gear that’s already seen combat—her vest is torn along one shoulder, there’s soot on her face, and her dark hair is pulled back in a severe bun that’s partially come undone.
But her eyes are bright with focused intensity as she coordinates operations across multiple fronts simultaneously.
She’s so focused she doesn’t even notice I’m here.
“Siobhan, I need your people to hold the north corridor for another ten minutes,” she speaks into one comm while studying tablet displays with updates. “Alessandro’s teams are moving to flank their main assault force.”
She switches to another frequency without missing a beat.
“Mario, pull your guys back from the warehouse approach.” She pauses, her nose wrinkling at whatever Mario just said.
She doesn’t like it. “Look, I know it feels like retreat, but I need you to draw them into the fucking kill zone we set up in the courtyard.” She scowls.
“Asshole,” she mutters and it’s unclear if Mario is still on the line.