Chapter 89 - The Ledger of the Tribunal
Dante did not retreat. He turned and walked directly toward the slipway doors, unhooking two fragmentation grenades from the dead mercenary’s tactical vest on the floor.
Before he stepped into the light, he knelt by Moreau's body one last time. With a swift flick of his combat blade, he sliced open the inner lining of the Frenchman’s tactical coat. His fingers found what he knew every commander carried: a leather-bound, waterproof manifest containing the cryptographic operational orders and payoff vouchers for the contract.
Dante tucked the ledger into his inner pocket.
He kicked the slipway doors wide open.
The glare of four marine searchlights struck him like a physical blow, illuminating his towering silhouette against the dark, cavernous mouth of the warehouse.
"Hold fire!" a man shouted from behind the lights on the dock.
A tall man in an expensive cashmere overcoat stepped onto the gangplank of the launch. He had slicked-back gray hair, an aristocratic Roman nose, and the arrogant, sneering demeanor of a Sicilian oligarch who believed his money and heritage made him untouchable. It was Don Gaetano Corvo himself—the high chancellor of the Palermo Tribunal.
"Well, well," Corvo laughed, his voice dripping with condescending amusement. "The great Dante Moretti. Lorenzo told us you were formidable, but you look like a wounded hound crawling out of a ditch."
"You came all this way from Sicily just to watch a child die, Gaetano?" Dante asked, his voice ringing clearly over the roar of the incoming tide against the pilings.
"The Tribunal doesn't leave the extermination of the d'Agostino inheritance to chance," Corvo replied coldly. "Where is the girl, Dante? Bring her out, kneel before me, and perhaps I will allow you to live out your days in an iron cell in Caltanissetta."
Dante smiled—a slow, terrifying baring of teeth that made the armed guards around Corvo tense visibly.
"You brought twelve men to a foreign city, Gaetano," Dante said, pulling the pins from both fragmentation grenades with his teeth. "You should have brought an army."
Dante hurled the two grenades directly into the cluster of searchlight generators on the launch deck.
"Down!" Corvo screamed.
The explosion tore the night open. A twin eruption of orange fire and jagged shrapnel obliterated the generators, shattering the searchlights and igniting a fifty-gallon drum of marine diesel on the launch's stern.
A wall of black smoke and roaring flames shot forty feet into the rain, showering the pier with burning debris. The Sicilian guards were thrown into wild chaos, screaming as fire consumed the gangplank.
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In the blinding flash, Dante drew both of his sidearms and opened fire, advancing into the storm of fire and lead like an engine of absolute destruction.
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