Page 77 of Stolen Sin

He grunts and seems unhappy but at least he doesn’t rush outside. I duck out the back door, nodding at a few injured soldiers, and pull out my phone. It feels fucked making a call right now, but Vito answers on the first ring.

I tell him the deal. I tell him how bad things are and how it’ll only get worse. He’s two minutes away, but I tell him to wait.

“Get everyone together,” I say and lay out my plan.

Vito doesn’t like it. He cackles like a madman and tells me I’m insane for even suggesting it. But when I push, he finally relents.

“Five minutes, little Don,” he says and hangs up the phone.

I shove it into my pocket. “I don’t love that nickname,” I murmur before finding Davide. “In five minutes, we need to have every single one of our soldiers laying down cover fire. Do you hear me?”

“You have a plan.” His eyes narrow. “Does it involve killing everyone down there?”

“No, it involves saving our fucking family. Spread the word.”

Chapter 47

Simon

It’s the longest five minutes of my life.

Davide’s men are spread out along the east side of the street, while Dad’s soldiers are on the west, but they’ve been communicating and trying to coordinate since the attack happened. It’s an uneasy truce, but a common enemy makes everyone shut the fuck up and start working together, so there’s that.

I pick off as many of the Santoro attackers as I can. My rifle bucks against my shoulder over and over, smashing bone, snapping skulls, ripping through flesh and body armor. The men in the center of the oasis are only the tip of the spear; the main body of the assault team is slogging through the houses at the north half of the block, getting closer and closer to my father’s home.

Of course they know which one is his. Santoro lived in the oasis for years before he betrayed us. The man helped devise and plan our fucking defenses. If there’s any person in the whole world who could pull off a crazy attack like this, it’s Luciano Santoro.

I make a solemn promise to myself up on the roof of an empty guest house: when this is over, I’m going to destroy that man, no matter what.

My pocket buzzes as I’m climbing back down after getting spotted again. It’s a text from Vito: thirty seconds. Meaning they’re right around the goddamn corner. I send out the word and tell everyone to get ready.

The thing about being in the mafia is, we have a whole lot of access to big, expensive toys. Our family has fingers in every industry, especially construction. There’s not a union, a company, a small mom-and-pop shop that doesn’t have something to do with the Bianco Famiglia, from dues-paying members to blackmail victims.

Which is how Vito was able to procure three enormous bulldozers with no notice.

They rumble around the corner, and for one glorious moment, all shooting stops.

I scramble back up to the roof. Nobody’s looking in my direction anymore. All eyes are staring at the bulldozers as they lower their enormous pushing blades. They scrape the parked cars on either side of them, shoving the sedans, trucks, and SUV sideways as the dozers rumble forward on their tracks, grinding down the street. They’re moving in slow motion but the attackers are too stunned to do much more than stare.

Until I give the signal and start shooting first.

Then the Bianco Famiglia unleashes hell on those armored trucks.

The men hiding behind their shields and the doors scatter, most of them ducking for cover back into the truck bodies. The sound is glorious and terrifying as every single Bianco soldier fires at once, the whole massive body of the Famiglia orchestrated at once, all thanks to fucking Davide for putting this together in barely a few minutes. And meanwhile, the dozers grind forward, getting closer and closer, and my heart races as they come within a few yards, then a few feet, and then?—

Contact. The first dozer hits the back of the first truck, followed by the second dozer. Everyone freezes as the sound of grinding gears and crashing metal overwhelms the gunfire. There are screams from inside the trucks, but they don’t move, not yet, until the dozer drivers switch into another gear and the tracks begin to grind against the pavement, and the third dozer pushes the backs of the other two, and the whole group of armored cars begins to skid down the block.

It’s glorious. It’s horrifying. The attackers scatter, spilling like angry hornets from a kicked nest. I pick them off, dumping rifle fire into their exposed numbers. Davide’s soldiers do the same, slaughtering terrified men as the bulldozers shove the armored trucks out of position, knocking them back and back, toward the end of the block cut off by fake construction.

I think it’s going to work. The bulldozers are making good progress and Davide’s soldiers are keeping up a steady rhythm of firing. Until one of the bulldozers suddenly stops and a red smear covers the windshield.

The driver slumps over, dead, and the whole mess skids to an ugly halt.

Trucks fly into the entrance to the oasis. Four of them, five of them, ten of them. They slam on the brakes as Vito and his men spill out. The ambush team tries to take them on but there are way too many, and I watch as Vito leads a group to chase the attackers down. Meanwhile, the trucks are still stalled.

I throw myself down the roof again. I hit the ground hard and twist an ankle, cursing my dumb luck, as I angle myself toward the stalled dozer. There’s more shooting now as the attackers begin to rally themselves, but I reach the construction truck’s cab without getting murdered. I grab the dead driver and yank his body out, letting him slump down to the concrete, and I’m about to take his place when a hand grabs my shoulder and yanks me down.

“Do you know how to drive that fucking thing?” Matty yells at me over the shooting.

---