24. Kara
Kara
I sit in the passenger seat of the car, staring at the screen of my phone as it buzzes for the sixth time since three o'clock. The caller ID displays the same familiar string of digits: Antonio Rossi.
I simply flip the screen face-down on the leather console.
He’s been calling every forty minutes. He wants me to lift the emergency stay on his commercial transit permits.
He thinks if he begs enough, I'll forget that he offered my hand in marriage to secure a harbor lease.
If Antonio ever got a breath of leverage back, he'd sell me to the next highest-bidding bastard without a second thought.
The driver slows the car to a crawl, stopping near the central loading lane of Pier 14.
The shipping yard is eerie and deserted.
Rows of stacked steel crates block the afternoon sun, casting long dark shadows across the cracked concrete floorboards.
Four days ago, Bernardo's secondary holding accounts were frozen by the federal court, locking these docks under neutral state trust. The state harbor inspectors were supposed to meet me here at four o'clock to finalize the asset inventory, but the parking lot near the harbor control tower is empty.
"Inspectors should have been here twenty minutes ago, Miss Rossi," the driver mutters, checking his side mirrors.
"They aren't coming, I guess," I say, my eyes scanning the gaps between the iron containers.
Something feels off.
Before the driver can put the car in reverse, a loud, muffled THUMP echoes through the quiet yard.
It’s a trap. Shit!
The front left side of the sedan drops with a sharp hiss of compressed air.
The driver curses, reaching for his coat lapel, but a second suppressed round tears straight through the front windshield, punching a clean spiderweb hole through the glass.
The driver grunts, slumped sideways against the steering wheel, his hand dropping limp.
He’s dead.
I unbuckle my seatbelt, duck low under the dashboard, and kick the rear passenger door wide open. I roll out onto the damp pavement, sliding straight under the steel frame of a blue shipping container.
Cold water soaks through the knees of my trousers, but my grip stays completely steady around my briefcase.
"Kara!" a voice wheezes out from the shadows between the crates.
The voice is awful, wet, raspy, and whistling through metal wires.
Heavy, uneven footsteps crunch against the wet gravel. I peek through the gap beneath the blue container. Four pairs of boots are moving slowly down the narrow aisle toward my car.
Stepping into the center lane is Vincenzo.
He isn't in his motorized wheelchair today.
He's standing on his own two feet, leaning against the steel wall of a container, his face pale, sweaty, and twisted into a manic sneer under the harbor light.
Stainless steel brackets hold his jaw together, and his mouth leaks saliva onto his collar.
He's hopped up on enough medical painkillers to force his broken body upright, his eyes wide and feverish with manic pride.
In his hands, he holds a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun.
Behind him stand three heavy-set men in leather coats.
"I knew... you'd come here!" Vincenzo gasps out through his wired teeth, his body trembling violently with effort as he racks the shotgun slide. CLACK-CLACK. "You... bitch! You destroyed everything! You and that bastard Leander!"
I slide out from beneath the blue container, standing up slowly in the narrow gap between two crates, thirty feet away from him. I smooth down my blazer, holding my briefcase firmly at my side.
"Your docks were seized by state jurisdiction four days ago, Vincenzo," I tell him, my voice smooth, quiet, and completely devoid of fear. "You're trespassing on federal trust property."
Vincenzo lets out a bitter, wet sound that is half a laugh and half a sob. "I don't give a damn... about federal trust! My father built this port! My blood paid for these cranes!"
I need to keep him talking long enough to find a way out of this.
"You vanish off the grid for four days to hide in some damp corner, Vincenzo, and your grand comeback is a desolate warehouse with three guys you can't even afford to pay," I take one slow step back toward the shadow of the steel crate. "You don't have a single capo left in this city."
"Shut up!" Vincenzo roars, spit spraying over his metal brackets as he raises the shotgun barrel toward my chest. "I have... fifty shells in this bag! I don't need capos... to put you to the ground! Let’s see how high and mighty Leander will be when that happens.”
"You're going to miss, Vincenzo," a deep, raspy voice echoes from the catwalk high above his head.
The air in the shipping yard turns freezing cold.
Vincenzo snaps his head up, his feverish eyes widening in pure terror.
Leander steps out from the shadows of the high catwalk overhead.
Oh, thank God.
His navy shirtsleeves are rolled up past his forearms, his trousers stained with grease, his face calm and unreadable.
In his right hand, he holds a three-foot iron rebar.
"Leander..." Vincenzo gasps out, his tremor worsening as he tries to pivot the shotgun upward toward the catwalk. "Get down here! I'll blow your chest... off!"
"You can't even hold the weight of the barrel, Vincenzo," Leander mutters.
Leander drops straight off the twelve-foot steel catwalk, landing on the damp concrete floor with a silent thud three feet behind Vincenzo's left shoulder.
Before Vincenzo can pull the trigger, Leander moves.
He bridges the gap in a single, explosive stride, his left hand shooting out like an iron clamp, grabbing the hot steel barrel of the 12-gauge and driving it straight upward toward the corrugated warehouse roof.
BOOM!
The deafening explosion shatters the quiet dockyard, sending a spray of lead buckshot tearing straight through the high skylights, showering glass down like hail onto the pavement.
Leander twists his left wrist downward with terrifying force. The shotgun barrel snaps sideways, tearing the skin off Vincenzo's thumbs as the weapon is ripped clean from his grip and tossed thirty feet into the harbor water.
Leander catches Vincenzo by his throat, lifting his two-hundred-pound frame off the stone floorboards, and drives the blunt iron rebar straight into Vincenzo's right shoulder joint.
A sickening, wet CRUNCH echoes across the quiet dock as the iron bar punches clean through the collarbone, shattering the shoulder into jagged fragments.
Vincenzo lets out a high, screeching howl of agony, blood spraying from his wired jaw as his right arm drops completely limp at his side.
"Kill him!" the lead enforcer behind Vincenzo screams, pulling a 9mm handgun from his coat. "Kill the bastard!"
The three street enforcers draw their weapons together.
"Leander! On your left!" I shout.
Leander doesn't wait for them to aim. He steps straight into the first enforcer's guard, catching the man's gun wrist with both hands. With a single, brutal twist, he snaps the man's forearm backward over his knee.
The radius and ulna break clean through the skin with a loud, wet SNAP.
The enforcer screams, dropping his weapon, but Leander doesn't let him fall. He catches the man by his vest collar, spins his body around as a human shield as the second enforcer fires two quick rounds straight into his partner's back.
Leander drives his bare right fist straight into the second enforcer's throat.
The impact crushes the second man's windpipe instantly. A gurgling gasp escapes the shooter's lips as he collapses flat onto his back on the concrete, his eyes rolling back as he chokes on his own blood.
The third enforcer panics, lunging forward with an iron pipe.
Leander catches the pipe mid-air, twists the man's wrist until the shoulder pops out of its socket, and drives the sharp, jagged end of the iron rebar straight into the man's ribs.
The rebar punctures the thoracic wall with a dull, heavy thud.
The enforcer groans, dropping the pipe, and sags limply onto the floorboards.
Silence descends on the pier, thick, metallic, and heavy with the smell of burnt gunpowder, fresh copper, and torn flesh.
Vincenzo lies on his knees near the edge of the deep-water railing, clutching his ruined shoulder, blood pouring from his mouth, his face covered in sweat and tears as he gasps for air.
He knows I'm Leander's vulnerability. As long as he draws breath, he'll target me.
Leander stands over his brother, his chest rising and falling in slow cycles. He kneels down in front of Vincenzo, reaching out with his right hand, catching Vincenzo by his hair, pulling his head back until their eyes meet at point-blank range.
"Why do you hate me so much, Vincenzo?" Leander asks, his raspy voice low, soft, and devoid of anger. "I left fifteen years ago. I never asked for your father's money, your docks, or your house. I never did anything to you."
Vincenzo lets out a bitter, blood-soaked wheeze through his wired jaw, tears of rage and pain streaming down his bruised cheeks.
"You should... blame yourself... for being born!
" Vincenzo spits out through his brackets, saliva spraying onto Leander's knuckles.
"The moment my mother... found out Roberto had another son...
with another woman... she was broken! She spent years in depression...
until the day she died! You caused that! "
Leander stares into his eyes, his expression completely unblinking.
"Then why don't you hate Roberto?" Leander asks softly. "He's the one who broke her heart."
Vincenzo trembles violently, his bloodshot eyes wide with manic fury. "You hate me... because I'm easier to hate than him," Leander adds in realization.