Chapter 10
The cinematic, bright sunlight outside the museum began to shift, casting long, dramatic shadows across the marble floors. Luciano walked slowly toward the grand entrance, his mind calculating the impending assault. The Moretti family was coming. They expected a chaotic, unprepared target.
"Silvio," Luciano commanded, his deep voice leaving no room for argument. "Arm every man on the payroll. We do not run. We invite them in."
Silvio’s eyes widened. "Boss, they are sending a heavy strike team. If we let them breach the perimeter—"
"We are not letting them breach," Luciano corrected smoothly, his cold eyes burning with lethal intent. "We are opening the front door. I want the exterior lights cut. Pull the guards back from the gates. Let the Moretti vehicles drive directly into the main courtyard. And when they are entirely inside the walls, you will unleash hell."
"It will be a bloodbath, Luciano," Silvio warned, his face pale.
"It will be an extermination," Luciano whispered.
The museum went into immediate, silent lockdown. Dozens of white American men in dark suits moved with lethal purpose, racking the slides of suppressed automatic weapons and taking up tactical positions along the second-floor balconies overlooking the grand courtyard.
Luciano stood in the shadows of the main gallery, watching the heavy iron gates through the glass doors. The bright video colors of the room were now muted by the encroaching dusk. He checked the magazine of his pistol, the metallic click echoing softly.
Less than twenty minutes later, three armored black SUVs rolled silently up the private driveway, their headlights cut. They moved like ghosts, expecting to find the perimeter guards asleep or bribed. Finding the main gates wide open, the lead vehicle confidently drove directly into the enclosed stone courtyard, followed closely by the other two.
The vehicles rolled to a stop. The doors swung open simultaneously, and nearly thirty heavily armed Moretti soldiers poured out onto the cracked asphalt, their suppressed submachine guns raised.
At the center of the formation stood Don Moretti himself, a cruel smile on his face, expecting an easy slaughter.
Luciano raised his secure radio to his lips. He looked down at the men who had dared to threaten his son's life.
"Fire," Luciano whispered.
The courtyard instantly erupted into a blinding, deafening hellscape. The silence of the night was shattered by the roaring thunder of heavy machine-gun fire raining down from the balconies. The cinematic, bright flashes of muzzle fire strobed across the courtyard like violent lightning.
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The Moretti men didn't even have time to raise their weapons. Caught entirely out in the open, trapped within the high stone walls, they were cut down with merciless, calculated precision. Glass shattered, tires blew out, and bodies dropped to the cobblestones. It was not a battle; it was a slaughter.
Luciano stepped out of the shadows, walking slowly toward the glass doors as the gunfire ceased. The war had just begun, but the Venturi empire was absolute.
