Chapter 37 - The Ghost Fleet
"Marco," Dante said. His voice did not carry a single trace of fear, rage, or desperation. It was as flat and terrifying as an open grave. "Look around you."
Marco’s eyes twitched nervously, but he kept his gun jammed hard against Sofia’s small head. "Don't play games with me! My uncle has fifty men at the pier! If I don't check in within two minutes, they send the clean-up crew!"
"Your uncle is not at the pier," Dante said calmly, taking half a step forward.
"Shut up!"
"Your uncle sold you, Marco," Dante continued, his words slicing through the young man’s frayed nerves like a scalpel. "Why do you think he sent you here alone with four mercenaries? Why do you think he told me to meet him at Pier 42? Because he knew I would track the real location. He knew I would come here first. You are the bait, Marco. You and Sofia. While I am killing you, Salvatore is boarding a private yacht at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to flee to the Bahamas with the syndicates' reserve funds."
Marco’s face twitched. A bead of sweat rolled into his eye. "You're lying! He’s my blood!"
"Check your phone," Dante said softly. "Call him. See if he answers."
In that fraction of a second, as Marco’s eyes instinctively flickered toward the burner phone in his tactical vest pocket, Maya moved.
She didn't have a gun. She didn't have armor. But she had the one thing these men had forgotten: she was entirely invisible to their calculations.
Maya reached down, grabbed a heavy, rusted iron wrench lying near the steam valve, and hurled it with every ounce of strength in her body directly into the high-pressure release valve of the overhead boiler.
*KABOOM.*
The brass fitting sheared completely off.
A deafening roar of superheated, blinding white steam exploded directly into the catwalk, engulfing Marco and his guards in an impenetrable, scalding fog.
"AHHH!" Marco screamed, blinded by the scalding vapor, his gun hand swinging wildly off target.
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Before the sound of the steam had even registered, Dante was already airborne.
***
