Chapter 8 - The War for the Docks
With Arthur Vance in federal custody and Thomas Miller fully exonerated, the corrupt empire of the Moretti family began to panic.
Salvatore Moretti—the ruthless, temperamental boss of the Moretti syndicate—realized that his twenty-year stranglehold on New York's maritime logistics was disintegrating hour by hour.
At 2:00 AM on a cold Thursday morning, an emergency war council was convened in a dark, heavily guarded warehouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Salvatore Moretti sat at a long folding table, slamming his fist onto the wood. "How did this happen?!" he roared at his five captains. "Vance is in federal custody! Preston is missing! The feds just frozen our offshore accounts in Midtown!"
"It was DeLuca, Boss," one of his captains stammered. "He found out about the Panamanian contract trap before he signed it."
"DeLuca is a brute!" Moretti spat, his yellowed teeth bared in rage. "He doesn't read fine print! He hires lawyers to do that! Which one of his attorneys caught the EPA exemption code?!"
The captain swallowed hard, looking down at a police intelligence brief in his hands. "It... it wasn't a lawyer, Boss."
Moretti frowned. "Then who?"
"A girl," the captain whispered. "A twenty-six-year-old former waitress named Cassidy Miller. Thomas Miller's daughter."
Moretti froze. His eyes widened in absolute shock and fury. "Thomas Miller's girl?! The auditor we framed seven years ago?!"
"She's DeLuca's new Head of Corporate Forensic Security," the captain explained nervously. "She’s been systematically going through fifteen years of our front company ledgers. She’s already unraveled three of our shell entities in New Jersey."
Moretti stood up slowly, a terrifying, murderous calm settling over his fat, scarred face.
"She’s pulling our teeth out with a pair of financial pliers," Moretti growled softly. "If she keeps digging into those ledgers for another week, she’ll find the offshore clearing account for the South American shipments. And then we all go to prison for life."
He looked at his chief enforcer—a tall, silent hitman named Dominic.
"Erase her," Moretti commanded coldly. "I don't care about DeLuca right now. Kill the girl tonight. Burn her office, burn her files, and bring me her laptop."
Dominic bowed his head silently. "It will be done, Boss."
Unbeknownst to the Moretti family, three floors above the warehouse floor, hidden inside an unused ventilation shaft, a tiny, high-definition directional microphone was transmitting every single word spoken in that room directly to the sixtieth floor of the DeLuca Tower.
In her office, Cassidy sat wearing headphones, listening to Moretti's death warrant with a serene, unbothered expression.
Beside her, Alessandro stood tapping his silver signet ring against the edge of her desk.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
"He wants to erase you, Cassidy," Alessandro said, his voice dropping into a register that was deadlier than a loaded gun. "He thinks you're a weak target."
May you like
Cassidy removed her headphones, setting them neatly on her desk beside her coffee cup. She turned her head, looking up at Alessandro with a slow, confident smile.
"Let him send Dominic, Alessandro," Cassidy said softly. "Because while Dominic is coming for me... I’ve already sent the feds to his warehouse."
