ALESSANDRO
The first explosion tears through the night at 11:47 p.m., seventeen minutes before we were supposed to begin our own assault.
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 thenight 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.”
