Chapter 7 - The Final Confrontation
Within eight minutes, the gunfire inside the mansion had completely stopped.
The absolute silence that followed was far more terrifying than the shooting. One by one, Gino’s elite operatives had been hunted down in the dark corridors of the east wing—disarmed, neutralized, and left bound in the service corridors without firing a single effective shot in return.
Marcus Vance, bleeding heavily from a non-fatal shoulder wound, was dragged roughly across the floor of the grand foyer and thrown face-down onto the cold marble tiles.
Heavy, unhurried footsteps echoed down the grand staircase.
Damian Cross walked down the steps, his shirt stained with dust and powder residue, his pistol tucked casually back into his waistband. He stopped a few feet away from the groaning operative, looking down at him with an expression of profound, chilling contempt.
"You missed," Marcus wheezed, spitting blood onto the white marble. "Gino... Gino is going to burn this entire city to the ground to finish what he started six years ago. You can't kill us all, Damian."
"I don't need to kill all of you, Marcus," Damian said quietly, pulling a heavy, encrypted satellite phone from his pocket. "I only need to talk to the man who sent you."
He dialed a single pre-programmed number and pressed speakerphone, dropping the device onto the floor right beside Marcus’s ear.
The phone rang twice before a familiar, gravelly voice answered from the other end.
“Marcus. Give me the report. Is the boy secured?”
Damian stepped forward, his boot resting lightly on Marcus’s injured shoulder, pressing down just enough to make the operative choke back a cry of pain.
"He's very secure, Uncle Gino," Damian said into the open line.
A sharp, sudden intake of breath hissed through the speaker on the other end of the line. Silence stretched for three agonizing seconds across three hundred miles of fiber-optic cable.
“Damian,” Gino’s voice dropped into a dark, venomous register. “So the dog bites back. You slaughtered my men.”
"Your men broke into my house, threatened my family, and pointed weapons at my son," Damian replied, his voice terrifyingly calm. "That wasn't a slaughter, Uncle. That was pest control."
“You arrogant little bastard!” Gino roared over the line, losing his cold composure entirely. “That boy is a threat to the entire syndicate! As long as he breathes, the succession is contested! I should have finished him off six years ago when we torched that car on Route 4!”
Every muscle in Damian’s body locked rigid. The confession he had spent six years waiting for—the undeniable truth of who had tried to murder his child—echoed loud and clear through the speaker, recorded automatically by the secure encryption servers running in the estate's basement.
"Thank you for that, Gino," Damian said, his voice dropping into an arctic whisper. "Federal prosecutors in three districts are currently listening to this exact audio feed. By sunrise, every federal marshal in the country will be kicking down your front door."
“You treacherous—!”
"Don't pack a bag, Uncle," Damian interrupted coldly. "You won't need one where you're going."
He ended the call, picked up the phone, and looked down at Marcus.
May you like
"Get him out of my house," Damian commanded quietly to the two estate security guards who stepped out of the shadows. "Hand him over to the federal task force waiting outside the perimeter gates."
The war was over. The lie had been shattered. And the bloodline of the Cross empire was finally, permanently secure.
