Chapter 38 Enrico
ENRICO
Darkness fell like a blade. Not gradual. Not forgiving. “Mia—down.”
I caught her shoulder, pulled her against me. The hum of the compressor deepened.
Dante’s voice moved through the dark. “Do you hear it? That sound?”
I raised the gun, followed the sound. The darkness was thick. Every muscle in my body knew what to do before my brain caught up.
“Be careful of explosives,” Marco hissed.
“Found one. Two minutes,” Andre said.
“Get Mia out.”
“No,” Mia whispered behind me. “I stay—”
“Not now.”
The click of her breath told me she understood, even if she hated me for it.
The voice came again — closer this time, from the back corridor. “Your grandfather signed away the city before you were even born, Enrico. He called it progress. Said the Gallos would protect trade, the Morettis would control supply. You know what they were supplying?”
“Death.”
“Debt,” Dante corrected, his laughter brushing the walls. “And now it’s yours.”
A single gunshot cracked the dark. Andre fired toward the sound, two precise replies that broke glass.
“Mia, go!”
Another hum. Louder. Closer. The compressor wasn’t a compressor — it was wired.
“Marco,” I barked.
“Got it.” He was already moving.
I knelt beside him, the gun still ready. Sweat rolled down his temple despite the cold. “How long?”
“Get out.”
A shadow moved where light should be. Dante again. Closer than before.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said. “How history repeats itself. The Moretti’s destroy what they can’t control. The Gallos burn what they can’t forgive.”
I leveled the gun at him. He didn’t flinch.
“You won’t shoot,” he said.
“Try me.”
He smiled, slow and poisonous. “Your father said the same thing once.”
The name landed like a punch to the ribs.
“Oh, you didn’t know? He wasn’t trying to protect the family, Enrico.
He ordered Giovanni killed because Giovanni threatened to expose the trafficking routes they’d built together.
The alliance wasn’t a peace. It was a cover.
So many things you didn’t know about your father and the legacy he left you. ”
My throat wouldn’t open.
He stepped closer. “You think you’re cleaning his mess. You’re standing in it.”
I fired.
The bullet missed his throat by an inch, shattered a pane behind him. Glass rained down like applause. He didn’t stop smiling.
Behind me, Marco yelled, “Thirty seconds!”
Dante’s gaze flicked toward the cooler. “You should run, Moretti. It’s what your blood does best.”
Then he disappeared — gone before the echo of his words had even died.
I turned and grabbed Marco by the collar. “Out!”
He pulled the cutter free, severed the last wire. The red light went dark.
The room inhaled. Then — silence. For half a second, I thought we’d made it. Then the floor shuddered. Not an explosion — an implosion. The back wall buckled, collapsing inward, brick and dust rolling.
“Mia!” I ran through the haze, lungs burning, calling her name. The dust was so thick, it labored my breathing. A shape stumbled into view — small, shaking, coughing. Her. I reached her just as she fell into me.
“Are you okay, my love?” I pulled her close to me. Her finger pointed and my eyes followed. Under a massive piece of fallen debris lied Dante.
“You found her… good everything is okay.” Marco came running with a flashlight, until his light caught the body. “About fucking time he got what he deserved.”
The Gallos and Di Fiore’s had history, even with the Moretti’s, but no longer. If tonight taught me anything, it was that this legacy was tarnished beyond repair and my wife needed to be my main priority.