Chapter 9 - THE FIRE IN THE VALLEY
Before Enzo could march Marco out of the room, a violent thud shook the heavy front doors of the lodge.
A second later, the double oak doors splintered inward.
Through the snow-swept frame stepped a figure holding a twelve-gauge pump shotgun, wearing a flour-dusted canvas coat and heavy leather boots.
It was Clara.
Her face was white with fury, her eyes blazing. Snow was caught in her hair, and her knuckles were white on the shotgun stock. Behind her, standing nervously in the dark courtyard, was the local sheriff, looking thoroughly intimidated and clutching a set of handcuffs.
"Clara?" Enzo lowered his gun, stunned. "I told you to take your father and leave."
"My father is safe at the cabin," Clara said, her voice cutting through the smoky great room. She swept the shotgun barrel across the room, causing the remaining mobsters to dive beneath the table. "And I don't take orders from mafia royalty."
She marched directly up to Marco Falcone. She looked at his camel-hair coat, his diamond pinky ring, and the cold, cowardly arrogance still flickering in his eyes.
"You," she said, her voice shaking with thirty years of accumulated grief. "You're the one who ordered the hit that broke my mother's back."
Marco sneered, recovering a sliver of his venom. "Get this filthy mountain peasant out of my face—"
Clara didn't pull the trigger. Instead, she swung the heavy wooden stock of the shotgun like a baseball bat, catching Marco squarely across the jaw.
The blow sent the older man crashing sideways into the coffee table, his nose shattered, spitting blood and teeth onto the rug.
The room was utterly silent.
Enzo didn't move a muscle to stop her. In fact, the faintest shadow of an approving smile touched the corner of his lips.
Clara lowered the gun, her chest heaving, her eyes burning as she looked down at the bleeding monster on the floor. "That was for my mother," she whispered.
She turned to Enzo, her expression hard and searching. "And what about you, Don Falcone? Are you going to shoot him, or are you going to let him rot in a cell?"
"Shooting him is too easy," Enzo said. He turned to the terrified sheriff standing in the doorway. "Sheriff Miller."
"Y-yes, sir?" the sheriff stammered.
"There are three federal warrants waiting on your fax machine right now for Marco Falcone, Wendell Pike, and Salvatore Bianchi. Kidnapping, racketeering, extortion, and interstate fraud. You will arrest them, process them, and deliver them to the federal marshals in Charleston by sunrise."
"And if I don't?" the sheriff squeaked.
Enzo stepped forward, his eyes boring into the lawman’s soul. "If you don't, I will buy your entire county, fire every deputy on your payroll, and ensure you spend the next twenty years sharing a cell with them. Do you understand me?"
"Crystal clear, Mr. Falcone," the sheriff gulped, immediately pulling Marco up by his collar and slapping the steel cuffs onto his wrists.
Within twenty minutes, the lodge was cleared. The state police, finally arriving in a convoy of four-wheel drives, secured the premises and took the wounded guards into custody under federal detainment orders.
Enzo and Clara stood outside on the stone terrace. The blizzard was finally beginning to break, revealing a canopy of brilliant, icy stars above the Appalachian ridge.
"How did you get the sheriff to come up here?" Enzo asked, looking at her side profile.
Clara wiped a stray hair from her forehead. "I told him you had three men locked in my bakery freezer who were willing to testify that he took bribes from Vance. He moved pretty fast after that."
Enzo let out a low, genuine laugh—the first real laugh he had produced in ten years. "You'd make a terrifying underboss, Clara Rossi."
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"Don't insult me," she replied, though a tiny smile cracked the corner of her lips. "I'm a baker. I make things that feed people. You just break things."
"I used to," Enzo said softly, looking out over the dark valley below. "Now I'm not so sure."
