Chapter 5 - The War for Pier 42While the legal transfer of the Romano empire was being finalized under Grace's direction, the dark underbelly of New York refused to go quietly into the night.
Marcus Moretti—the sixty-year-old leader of a rival Brooklyn syndicate who had been watching my internal family crisis—believed the Romano family was weak, divided, and vulnerable.
At 11:00 p.m. on a rainy Thursday night, three days after I signed the surrender documents, Moretti launched a secondary strike against the primary shipping terminals at Pier 42, attempting to seize three unregistered cargo vessels carrying seventy million dollars in commercial assets.
Inside the executive boardroom at the Romano Global Building downtown, Frank, Marco, and the senior captains sat in a state of absolute, chaotic alarm.
"Moretti has forty armed men at the pier, Boss!" Marco reported frantically, looking at the security monitors. "He knows you transferred the voting proxy to Donna Grace! He thinks you've been stripped of your teeth!"
I sat at the head of the conference table, wearing a dark linen suit, my face calm, cold, and deadpan.
I didn't reach for my usual tactical jacket. I didn't order sixty men to launch a street war across Brooklyn.
I picked up my phone, dialing an encrypted direct line to the Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Organized Crime Division in New York—a man named Agent Richard Vance, who happened to be Grace's attorney's brother.
"Agent Vance," I spoke smoothly into the receiver, my baritone carrying a quiet, lethal authority. "Marcus Moretti is currently committing armed federal cargo theft at Pier 42. His entire secondary board is present at the site."
On the other end of the line, Agent Vance let out a low, disbelieving laugh: "Vincent Romano... calling the FBI?"
"I am a non-voting advisory director of a legitimate maritime logistics corporation, Agent Vance," I replied flatly, a subtle, cold smile touching my lips. "I am reporting a crime on our property. The shipping manifests and live camera feeds are being routed to your server now."
Within twenty minutes, twelve federal tactical teams, flanked by US Coast Guard cutters, swarmed Pier 42 from the water and the land.
Marcus Moretti and his forty mercenaries were trapped like rats inside the primary warehouse, surrounded by heavy federal armor, disarmed, and arrested on live national television without a single shot fired by the Romano family.
Sitting in the boardroom, watching Marcus Moretti being dragged away in heavy steel handcuffs on the wall monitor, Frank let out a long, stunned breath.
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"You dismantled the Moretti family in twenty minutes... using the FBI," Frank gasped, looking at me in total, speech-bound awe.
"I didn't dismantle them, Frank," I corrected quietly, standing up and buttoning my jacket. "Donna Grace's corporate strategy did."
