Chapter 6 - Blood on the Schuylkill
For two weeks, the silence was agonizing.
Nico kept his word. He did not visit the flower shop. He did not send flowers. He did not call.
Instead, he lived in war rooms.
The Philadelphia underworld was shifting like tectonic plates under pressure. Dominic Bellini, an aging capo with delusions of empire, was making his move. Shipments through the Delaware River were being hijacked. Two of Nico’s commercial warehouses had been vandalized. Rumors spread through the back rooms of South Philly that Nico Valente had gone soft, distracted by a widow and three brats in Queen Village.
Inside the mahogany-lined office of Valente Shipping at the Navy Yard, Nico sat behind a massive desk, listening to his lieutenants argue.
“We hit them now, Boss!” yelled Sal, a veteran enforcer with graying hair. “Bellini’s crew thinks you’re hesitating! If we don’t wipe out Pier Twenty-Seven, every crew between here and Atlantic City is going to start taking bites out of our territory!”
Nico didn't answer. He was staring at a small piece of lined notebook paper sitting beside his fountain pen.
*1. Do you yell when you’re mad?*
*2. Do you like dogs even if they shed?*
*3. Are you secretly mean?*
He had kept the paper in his breast pocket every day since that frozen night at the conservatory.
“Boss?” Rafe’s voice cut through the shouting.
Nico looked up. The room went dead silent. When Nico Valente looked at a man with that flat, unblinking focus, survival instincts took over.
“Bellini wants an open war,” Nico said, his voice deceptively calm. “He wants chaos in the streets so the federal task force steps in and freezes our commercial assets. We don’t give him what he wants.”
“Then what do we do?” Sal asked, frustrated.
“We starve him,” Nico replied, leaning forward, his fingers interlaced. “Cut off his supply lines from Baltimore. Freeze his accounts at the state bank. Buy out the leases on his trucking depots. When he can’t pay his soldiers on Friday, they’ll bring me his head on a silver platter without us firing a single shot.”
The men nodded, murmuring agreement. It was the Valente way: cold, calculated, crushing.
Then Rafe’s phone buzzed.
Rafe glanced at the screen, and his face instantly turned to stone. He looked up at Nico, his throat working.
“What is it?” Nico asked, a terrible premonition gripping his gut.
“Team Bravo,” Rafe said, referring to the unmarked surveillance detail watching Mara’s block. “They were ambushed ten minutes ago behind the flower shop. Stun grenades and suppressed weapons. The detail is down.”
Nico shot to his feet so fast his heavy leather chair slammed into the wall. “The shop?”
“Aria, Chloe, and Daisy were being picked up by their mother from the school bus stop at Fourth and Bainbridge,” Rafe read from the text, his voice trembling slightly. “A black utility van just cut off the corner. Shots fired.”
The entire room seemed to drop twenty degrees.
Nico didn't shout. He didn't swear. He simply reached into his desk drawer, pulled out a black semi-automatic pistol, checked the chamber with a lethal, metallic *clack*, and shoved it into his shoulder holster.
“Sal,” Nico said, his voice flat, devoid of humanity. “Call every man we have. Lockdown the bridges. Nobody leaves the city.”
“Boss—”
May you like
“Rafe, you’re with me,” Nico commanded, storming toward the door, his overcoat trailing behind him like the wings of a vengeful angel. “If a single hair on their heads is harmed, Dominic Bellini’s entire bloodline ends before midnight.”
***
