Chapter 8 - Steel and Bone
In the master bedroom, Salvatore was already dressed in a crisp black shirt and dark trousers, sitting upright in his wheelchair by the desk. He had heard the cars arrive. He had seen them on the security monitors before the feed was cut.
He didn’t look surprised.
He looked like a wolf that had been cornered in its den—and was entirely ready to tear the hunters apart.
Milo sat on the rug near the window, quietly playing with his wooden soldier, seemingly unaware of the storm brewing outside the heavy oak doors.
“Nadia,” Salvatore called out sharply as the door flew open.
It wasn’t Nadia who burst into the room.
It was Gianni, followed closely by Aldo Bianchi and two armed enforcers.
Gianni looked sweaty, his eyes wide with a manic mix of fear and triumph. Aldo Bianchi looked calm, leveling a suppressed 9mm pistol directly at Salvatore’s chest.
“Well, cousin,” Gianni sneered, trying to sound like a boss while his voice cracked at the edges. “It’s over. You missed the meeting. You missed the future. Hand over the safe combinations and sign the port transfer papers, and we’ll let you live out your days quietly in a sanitarium in Switzerland.”
Salvatore didn’t flinch. His gray eyes locked onto Aldo Bianchi, ignoring Gianni entirely.
“Aldo,” Salvatore said, his voice smooth as glass. “You always did lack imagination. Wearing a cheap suit to your own treason.”
Aldo’s face tightened. “You were finished the second you hit that garage floor, Sal. You just didn’t have the decency to die.”
“And you didn't have the stomach to finish the job,” Salvatore replied coldly.
Out in the hallway behind the armed enforcers, Nadia slipped up to the open doorway, clutching a heavy brass candlestick she had grabbed from the landing. Her eyes widened in horror as she saw the guns pointed straight at Salvatore.
Milo, sitting on the floor, suddenly stopped playing with his soldier. He looked up at Aldo, then at the gun, and then at Salvatore.
“Do it, Aldo,” Gianni hissed, stepping back. “End it.”
Aldo raised the barrel higher, his finger tightening on the trigger.
At that exact second, Milo did something impossible.
The boy stood up, picked up the wooden soldier by its feet, and hurled it with surprising force straight at Aldo Bianchi’s shins. The wooden toy bounced off Aldo’s trouser leg with a sharp clack.
Aldo flinched instinctively, his eyes darting down for a split second.
That split second was all the Wolf needed.
With a roar that shook the glass in the windows, Salvatore lunged forward out of his chair, using every ounce of his massive upper-body strength. He didn’t use legs; he used raw, primal velocity. He slammed his body directly into Aldo’s knees, taking the assassin down in a violent crash of bone and hardwood.
The gun fired wildly, the bullet shattering a crystal decanter on the sideboard.
Before the enforcers could react, Salvatore had pinned Aldo to the floor, his massive hands wrapping around the traitor’s throat with crushing, unstoppable force.
“You missed,” Salvatore snarled into Aldo’s purple-tinged face, before smashing the man’s head against the floorboards, rendering him instantly unconscious.
Gianni screamed, stumbling backward—right into the doorway where Nadia stood waiting.
With a desperate cry of maternal fury, Nadia swung the heavy brass candlestick with both hands, catching Gianni squarely across the temple. Gianni crumpled to the floor like a sack of wet salt, knocked out cold.
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The two remaining enforcers stared in stunned disbelief at the downed traitors, then looked at Salvatore, who was slowly rising from the floor, leaning heavily against his overturned wheelchair, his eyes burning with absolute, terrifying authority.
Slowly, deliberately, the two enforcers dropped their weapons to the floor and raised their hands.
