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This was the shipment Danny was supposed to move through the Brooklyn docks before he gave his daughter away to save his neck.
Four young acolytes, boys barely twenty years old with shaved heads and tactical webbing strapped over their black shirts, stand at attention beside the weapons crates. Their eyes are bright with the fanaticism that only holy duty can breed. They do not see murder; they see purification.
"Listen to me, brothers," I say, stepping into the center of the vault. "The abomination returns to our soil tonight. Daniel O'Connor's seed, defiled by the Italian devil, walks with her head held high, bearing his ring while our holy Bishop rots in unconsecrated earth.
The acolytes cross themselves with rigid, precise movements.
"The girl belongs to the cross," I command, my voice dropping into that deep, rhythmic cadence that has held parishes captive from pulpits for forty years. "She was consecrated to the altar three years ago. The Messina Don stole her before the final rites could be spoken, but God does not leave ledgers unbalanced. When Romeo comes for this compound—and he will come—we do not bargain. We do not surrender."
I reach into an open crate, lifting a heavy semi-automatic rifle, its matte black finish cold and heavy in my grip.
"You shoot the Sicilian soldiers down like vermin," I instruct them, my finger resting lightly outside the trigger guard. "You take Romeo's head for the bishop. But the girl... the girl is taken alive. I will have her back on the altar of Saint Jude before dawn, and this time, there will be no stray bullet to save her."
A distant crack, sharp and explosive, cuts through the drone of the rain outside.
Kenneth freezes on the stairs, his face draining of color. "Donald... what was that?"
Another crack follows, louder this time, accompanied by the muffled, violent roar of a breaching charge detonating at the outer courtyard gate.
The security alarms begin to scream, high and shrill, echoing off the stone walls like shrieking demons.
A cold, vicious smile splits my mouth.
"He is here," I say softly, racking the bolt of the rifle with a heavy metallic click. "Bring the ammunition up to the sanctuary. Let us see if Romeo Messina can bleed as well as his father."
Rain hammers the stained glass until the saints look like they are drowning. I walk the nave and count rifles the way I once counted rosaries. God is a ledger. I have always understood ledgers.
Kenneth wants to flee to Rome. Cowards always want Rome. I want the girl on the stone and the Sicilian's blood in the aisle. When the first charge blows the courtyard gate, I feel something close to joy.
"Positions," I tell them. "The lamb comes home tonight."
I have written her name in the margin of my missal for three years. Iris O'Connor. The offering that ran. Men like Romeo think obsession is a Sicilian invention. They have never sat in a confessional and listened to a city beg.
Kenneth crosses himself like a man packing a suitcase. I do not waste the gesture. God already took his vote the night the bishop's blood hit the marble. Tonight I only collect the balance.
When the second charge hits, the crucifix above my desk tilts. Dust rains into the wine. I drink that too.
TWENTY-TWO
ROMEO
The rain in the Catskills falls like lead shot, drumming against the reinforced roof of the Cadillac Escalade.
Through the tinted glass, the outline of Saint Jude's Monastery cuts a jagged black silhouette against the lightning-split sky. It's an old fortress of gray limestone and slate roofing, built in the late nineteenth century by Irish Catholic money, completely off the grid and protected by iron gates and dense pine woods.
For twenty years, this was the private retreat for the diocese council. A place where dirty money was laundered into foreign accounts and holy men gave orders to bury bodies in shallow pine graves.
Tonight, it burns.
Beside me in the leather backseat, Iris sits completely motionless.
She hasn't put the scarlet ribbon back on since we left the hospital. Her pale face is bare, the jagged silver scars around her eyes catching the pale dashboard light. She wears a tailored black overcoat over her linen shirt, her red hair pulled back into a severe braid that rests over her left shoulder. On her right hip sits a custom Glock 19 with textured grip tape that I had fitted for her smaller hands in Sicily.
Her fingers rest lightly on the handle, calm and steady. Sofia sits between her knees on the floorboard, wearing her tactical harness, her golden eyes watching the rain-slicked driveway through the front windshield.
"Five minutes out, Don," Tony murmurs from the passenger seat, racking the slide of an M4 rifle with a sharp metallic clack. "Enzo has two squads flanking the perimeter through the east tree line. Jamie called in twenty minutes ago from the airfield. He landed his transport from Edinburgh, cleared customs with our port paperwork, and is thirty seconds behind our tail."
I nod once, my gaze never leaving my wife's profile.
