GHOST OF THE GODFATHER

CHAPTER 11: THE TRAP IN ROOM 302

The night wind howled through the gaps in the rusted fire escape, carrying the scent of rain that would soon fall again. Vittorio Valdieri moved in silence, each step calculated with the precision of a killer who had lived through thousands of nights like this.

“Four men,” Vittorio whispered to himself as he checked the magazine of The Black Mamba. “Two in the hallway, two inside. Standard room-clearing formation.”

He reached the third floor. Through the small glass panel in the emergency door, he saw the silhouettes of two armed men with their backs turned to him. They wore tactical vests, their night vision goggles pushed up onto their foreheads. Their suppressed submachine guns were aimed steadily at the door to Room 302.

Vittorio did not attack immediately. He slipped toward a small utility room beside the stairs. There, he found what he needed, two spare LPG gas canisters for the motel’s water heaters and a coil of electrical cable with insulation peeling in several places.

“Leo, you’re about to learn how to turn a confined space into hell,” Vittorio muttered.

He dragged one of the gas canisters slowly toward an air vent connected directly to Room 302. With his new folding knife, he sliced into the gas hose, letting the sharp, sulfurous scent begin to seep into the hallway.

In the corridor, one of the mercenaries, a man with burn scars along his neck named Miller, sniffed the air.

“Vane, you smell that?” Miller asked over the comm.

“What smell?” came the reply from inside the room.

“Gas. Feels like a leak in the heating line,” Miller said as he moved toward the utility room.

Vittorio pressed himself against the wall, gripping the exposed electrical cable he had already connected to the hallway’s main switch. When Miller appeared in the doorway, Vittorio did not shoot. Instead, he drove a brutal kick into Miller’s knee, sending him crashing down.

“What the—”

Before Miller could shout, Vittorio pressed the live wire into a thin layer of water pooling across the floor from a leaking pipe.

Zzzzt!

Miller convulsed instantly. The high voltage current shut down his nervous system before he could pull the trigger. Vittorio caught his body to keep it from hitting the ground too loudly, then took Miller’s combat knife and drove it into the base of his skull.

One down.

“Miller? Report your status,” Vane’s voice crackled from the radio on the corpse’s shoulder.

Vittorio grabbed the radio and pressed the talk button, but said nothing. He let the faint hiss of leaking gas carry through the transmission.

“Miller! Respond!”

Vittorio moved quickly. He dragged one of the gas canisters to the hallway threshold, then kicked it, sending it rolling toward the slightly open door of Room 302.

“Gas! There’s gas in the hallway!” shouted the second soldier stationed outside the room.

Vittorio fired a single shot from The Black Mamba. The bullet was not aimed at the soldier’s head, but at the rolling gas canister.

The spark from metal striking metal triggered a small explosion, blasting the door of Room 302 wide open. Vittorio used the smoke and chaos to charge inside.

“Contact! Target in the hallway!” the second soldier shouted before his head snapped back from Vittorio’s second shot.

Vittorio rolled across the wrecked floor of the room, sliding behind an overturned bed. Inside, Vane and a large man named Kurt unleashed a barrage of suppressed fire toward the bed.

Pfft pfft pfft pfft!

The hiss of bullets tore through the mattress above Vittorio’s head.

“Leo Ravelli! Who the hell do you think you are?” Vane roared as he kept firing. “Come out and face us like a man!”

Vittorio drew in a slow breath, steadying the wild rhythm of his heartbeat. “You walk into my room uninvited, and now you ask who I am? That’s rude, Vane.”

Vane hesitated at the calmness in that voice. “That voice… you’re not Leo. Who are you?!”

“I am the rightful owner of everything you’re trying to steal tonight,” Vittorio replied.

He fired blindly at the ceiling light, plunging the room into total darkness. In the dark, he held the advantage. He knew every inch of this room. He had prepared it as a trap from the beginning.

“Kurt! Use thermal!” Vane ordered.

Kurt pulled down his thermal goggles. But when he looked toward the bed, all he saw was a large heat mass. Vittorio had turned on a portable heater beneath a pile of pillows.

“He’s spoofing our sensors! He’s not there!” Kurt shouted.

“I’m here,” Vittorio whispered from behind the wardrobe in the corner.

He struck from the blind spot. He did not use a firearm, avoiding any muzzle flash that would give away his position. Instead, he drove Miller’s knife into the gap between Kurt’s body armor and his neck.

“Gkhh—!” Kurt tried to turn, but Vittorio twisted the blade, severing a major artery.

Kurt collapsed, slamming into the dressing table. Vane, realizing his partner was down, unleashed a burst of fire toward the wardrobe.

Vittorio was already gone. He moved along the floor like a ghost, slipping toward the small kitchenette in the corner. He had already opened all the gas valves there earlier. The air inside the room had reached a dangerously saturated level.

“Vane,” Vittorio called from the darkness. “Do you know what happens when you fire a weapon in a room filled with butane gas?”

Vane froze. Only then did he truly notice the sharp stench flooding his lungs. “You’re insane. You’ll die with us!”

“I’ve already died once, Vane,” Vittorio said as he stood near the window, which he had already loosened open. “This time, I just want to make sure I have company on the way back.”

He held Kalen’s Zippo lighter. He flicked it once. A small flame sparked to life.

“No, wait!” Vane shouted, his sweat-soaked face illuminated as he snapped on his tactical flashlight and aimed it at Vittorio.

“Tell Antonio Vittorio Valdieri sends his regards,” Vittorio said with a faint smile.

He tossed the lighter into the center of the room and, at the same instant, leaped out the third-floor window.

A violent explosion tore through the motel. A massive tongue of fire burst from the window of Room 302, shattering glass and concrete. Vane and what remained of his team vanished in an instant, consumed by a roaring fireball.

Vittorio crashed onto the roof of a box truck parked in the alley below.

Agonizing pain surged through his body. His right shoulder tore open again, and he could feel one or two ribs crack. But he was alive.

He rolled off the truck and hit the wet asphalt, gasping as he stared upward. The third floor of the motel had become a blazing furnace in the darkness. Sirens from fire trucks and police cars began to wail in the distance.

“Damn it,” Vittorio growled as he forced himself up. Leo’s body was falling apart. The tremors returned to his hands, worse this time, accompanied by a wave of nausea.

He dragged himself into the shadows of the alley, away from the firelight. He knew he could not stay in this district any longer. The police would soon seal the area, and The Circle would send more men after the failure of Vane’s team.

“This is only the beginning,” Vittorio whispered, clutching his blood-soaked shoulder.

He staggered through the narrow streets of the outskirts, heading toward a more derelict zone beneath an overpass, a place where technology and law rarely reached. Among the homeless and the forgotten, he hoped to find somewhere to hide, to recover his strength.

Every step was agony, yet the fire in his eyes did not dim in the slightest. He had proven one thing tonight, even with a broken body, the soul of a Godfather remained lethal.

He disappeared into the shadows beneath the overpass just as the rain began to fall hard, as if the sky itself were trying to wash away the blood scattered along his path.