Chapter 9 - The Battle for Lake Forest
The interior of the Moretti mansion became a battlefield cast in deep, haunting shadows beneath the midnight moon. Nikolai Colombo’s mercenaries moved through the grand ballroom in a tight, professional wedge formation, their suppressed weapons raised, their infrared laser sights cutting through the dark like red spiderwebs.
"Clear the floor," a voice whispered from the smoke.
Suddenly, the grand crystal chandelier overhead exploded into a million glittering fragments as Dominic fired a high-caliber round from his position on the grand staircase landing. The shower of glass distracted the lead mercenaries for a fraction of a second—all the time the Moretti enforcers needed to open fire from the upper galleries.
The quiet night was shattered by the deafening, rapid chatter of automatic weapons, muzzle flashes illuminating the dark room in violent, stuttering bursts. Two of Nikolai’s men dropped instantly to the marble floor, their tactical vests shredded by the close-range ambush.
Dominic strode down the staircase, completely ignoring the bullets whizzing past his ears, his pistol barking with a precise, lethal rhythm that cut through the center of the enemy formation. He didn't look like a billionaire executive; he looked like the god of death himself, protecting his kingdom from the defilers.
"Flank them left!" Nikolai Colombo screamed from the rear, drawing a heavy combat knife as his rifle ran dry. He rushed toward the corridor leading to the nursery wing, desperate to find a piece of leverage to save his life.
But Dominic intercepted him at the entrance of the library.
Dominic tackled the younger Colombo don into the mahogany bookshelves, the force of the impact sending hundreds of ancient leather-bound volumes raining down onto the floor. They wrestled in the dark, Nikolai striking Dominic across the jaw with the heavy handle of his knife, drawing a thin line of bright red blood.
Dominic didn't even blink. He grabbed Nikolai by his tactical collar, driving his massive knee into the gangster’s ribs with a sickening crack, followed by a powerful, bone-crushing punch that shattered Nikolai’s nose and sent him crashing backward onto the floor, completely unconscious.
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The remaining mercenaries, seeing their leader taken down so effortlessly and their tactical jamming array destroyed by Gabriel’s tech team, dropped their weapons and raised their hands in total, terrified surrender as thirty heavily armed Moretti guards surrounded the room.
The battle was over. The Colombo family was completely eradicated from the city of Chicago, and the threat to Dominic's bloodline was permanently, irreversibly buried.
