Chapter 1 - The Bloodhound’s Wake
The penthouse suite on the forty-second floor of the Ashworth Grand Hotel smelled of copper, gun smoke, and hundred-dollar-an-ounce cologne.
Salvatore Moretti stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass, his hands resting in the pockets of a hand-tailored charcoal suit that bore three specks of dark, drying blood on the right cuff. Outside, the Manhattan skyline was choked with sleet. Below him, eighty stories of stone and steel plummeted into the black concrete arteries of a city he owned, ruled, and currently despised.
Behind him, two of his enforcers were dragging a heavy canvas tarp across the Italian marble floor. The body inside the tarp did not twitch; Salvatore’s hollow-point round had solved the man's treachery five minutes ago.
"Who else?" Salvatore’s voice was barely louder than a whisper, but in the vast, silent room, it carried the weight of a guillotine blade dropping.
Luca, his underboss, stood with his head bowed, clutching a cracked burner phone. Luca was a man who had survived two turf wars and three federal indictments without blinking, but tonight his knuckles were white, and his skin had the sallow cast of parchment.
"Cassian’s crew," Luca whispered. "They had inside help. A service elevator keycard was logged at two-fourteen in the morning. They breached the nursery suite on the thirty-eighth floor while the perimeter guards were distracted by the false alarm in the kitchen."
Salvatore did not turn around. His reflection in the glass was a ghost: thirty-four years old, jaw carved from granite, eyes the color of winter frost, and a scar cutting through his left eyebrow down to his cheekbone. He had inherited the Moretti syndicate at twenty-six and drowned New York in enough blood to secure peace. But peace was an illusion built on shifting sand.
"My daughter," Salvatore said. Just two words.
"We have Cassian cornered in an industrial park in Queens. His men are breaking under interrogation. But..." Luca swallowed hard. "Cassian didn't have her when our perimeter team engaged his vehicle three blocks from the hotel."
Salvatore turned around slowly. The movement was smooth, predatory, devoid of wasted motion.
"Explain."
"Cassian realized our blockades closed faster than he anticipated. The city was sealed within six minutes. He panicked. The operative who took Donna Gianna from the crib—a driver named Vane—was hit during the crossfire in the alley before he reached the getaway sedan." Luca hesitated, his chest heaving. "Vane was found dead behind the service entrance of the hotel. He didn't have Gianna. Cassian swears on his life he never received the package."
A terrifying stillness settled over Salvatore. The room seemed to drop ten degrees.
"He threw her away," Salvatore said, the words cold and dead. "To save his own skin from being caught with her in his arms, the dog discarded her."
"Boss—"
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"Tear the Ashworth Grand down to the bedrock," Salvatore commanded, his eyes igniting with a lethal, terrifying focus. "Check every sewer grate, every service corridor, every trash chute, every basement. Seal every exit. If my daughter is not in my arms by sunrise, burn this borough until nothing remains standing."
***
