Chapter 104: Chapter One Hundred and Four

Frankie eyed his father up and down before letting out a laugh of respect from his nose. “It’s your call, Pops. But let me warn you. I will not hold back who I really am when it comes to protecting what matters to me,” Frankie promised.

Frank Senior sat back, no longer in Frankie’s face. He laughed. “When have you ever?”

Frankie glanced up at Accardi, who was typing furiously on his phone. “You’ll be surprised,” he assured him. “I need everyone in the basement so we can regroup. Move, now.”

“Wh-what about Nora?” Marge asked, looking up at Frankie as he directed her to the stairwell.

“It was only the leg, Ma, she’ll be okay, I promise. I won’t let anything happen to her.”

“Was Virginia with her?”

“I didn’t see her, Ma.”

The group made its way to the basement. Frankie heaved a chest freezer large enough to fit five bodies from under a tool bench. He opened the lid to reveal an arsenal. Marge gasped while Conor sanded his hands and licked his lips in excitement. Frankie handed a bulletproof vest to his mom, who swallowed hard as he helped her put it on.

“I’m assuming you all have one on already?” Frankie asked, eyeing Leo as he checked the ammunition at his belt and Conor, who was inspecting a rather large looking rifle.

“Never leave home without it,” Leo said, tapping his handgun to his chest.

A thundering of feet from the stairs had everyone turning with their guns raised, only to find it was Accardi and Frank Senior. Frankie lowered his gun and his jaw as Frank Senior brought down an arsenal of his own.

“What the hell, Dad?” Frankie asked as Frank Senior laid out four rifles, five handguns and a collection of knives.

“What?” Frank Senior asked. “This is America. I believe in the Second Amendment. I have every right to protect my home. I obtained these weapons legally and registered them with the proper authorities. Marge…” Frank Senior called, handing over a small Smith and Wesson.

“Ma?!” Frankie gasped.

Marge blushed as she took her weapon from Frank Senior. She smiled shyly as she patted the gun meant for a woman’s smaller hands. “Your father didn’t want to have weapons in the house and me not know how to use them.”

“Safety is important, son,” Frank Senior chastised with a shake of his head as he started counting the available rounds.

Frankie shook his head and pulled out another vest. For the first time since entering the home, his black gaze swiveled to Gloria, who stood at the outermost part of the room, trying to stay out of the way. He approached her cautiously, as if he were a high school student wanting to talk to his crush for the first time. He flung the vest over her neck and nodded for her to put her arms through.

“You haven’t spoken a word, Vixen,” Frankie said, barely lifting the right side of his mouth as he velcroed the Kevlar vest over her dress.

She looked up and met his gaze, which swallowed her every thought like a black hole would a comet. “I was so ready for my next words to be ‘I do,’” she confessed in a whisper.

He tilted her chin up and kissed her lightly. “It’ll happen, Vixen. We just need to kill your dad first.”

“Should have let you kill him when you had the chance,” she said, letting out a breath as he took her gun and checked how many bullets she’d already expended.

“Ah, well, every new leader goes through a growing period. You let your dad stay alive, Accardi sold a bunch of underage girls to murderous psychopaths," Frankie argued.

“She gave herself over to you willingly,” Accardi growled, his Don expression set in stone, ready to get the job done.

“Forgiving him so easily was another mistake you’ll have to learn to get past,” Frankie said with a roll of her eyes. The joke was finally enough to relax her and she smiled. “Ah, there she is. The only woman crazier than me, ready to go kill her dad, marry a psychopath and take over a crime syndicate all in one week.”

“Our cops have set up a barrier a few blocks out to keep civilians away. Ivan’s men are also there in some sort of fucked-up, old-school mafia standoff,” Accardi debriefed, eyes still on his phone.

“At least we should make the front page tomorrow,” Frankie joked, pulling Gloria back toward the table where everyone was picking out their weapons.

“Not if I can help it,” Accardi grumbled. “My guys say we have six men down, stats unknown. The rest have found nooks and crannies throughout the neighborhood, waiting on our command to make the next move so…” Accardi put his phone down and spread both palms along the metal workbench everyone now gathered around. “What’s the play, Donati?”

“Ivan’s not leaving til I’m dead, at least. He wouldn’t come all this way to run and hide. He’s not Sergei. If he’s got men standing up to the police…”

“He wants me too,” Accardi agreed.

“Fucking idiot,” Leo said with a shake of his head.

“Idiot, maybe, but the man knows what is at stake. If he wants the deal to go through with Sergei, he can’t let me live. If he kills me, he knows Accardi will seek revenge…”

“You flatter yourself,” Accardi said with a smirk.

“Am I wrong?” Frankie asked. Everyone looked at Accardi, who pursed his lips and shrugged. “Awww, you’re so cute.”

“Um, flirt a little later, guys?” Gloria pressed.

“Sorry, Vixen, I forget you’re still insecure about my relationships,” Frankie teased, to which she rolled her eyes. Frankie pulled a folded map from the chest freezer and spread it out. It showed every street, the blueprints of each house, and detailed the sewer systems below ground within a ten-block radius. “Ivan will be close by,” he began, circling the nearest four houses on each side of what had become the Donati compound. “He’ll have Nora with him,” he surmised, casting a glance at his mom, whose grip on her gun tightened.

“He’ll use her as leverage,” Gloria guessed. “He knows how much she means to us all.”

“Yeah, calling her into the house was kind of a rookie move, Frank,” Leo added helpfully.

“Ivan already knows her,” Frankie growled. “He would have instructed his men to grab her if she ran.”

“No need to get sensitive,” Leo chastised. “I was just saying.”

“He’ll have his best men nearby, if not right beside him,” Gloria continued. “Most likely snipers positioned all over and then the cannon fodder closer to the border with the cops.”

“Very good, Vixen,” Frankie complimented. “Accardi, I’d have your back up men… I’m assuming you have men waiting in the wings?” Accardi gave a shop nod. “Have them cover the cops and look for any holes they can find to get closer. If we need to make an escape, I’ve rigged explosives along the sewer system indicated by the red X’s,” Frankie instructed, pointing to each X leading through to where the cops would be stationed. “Once they’re in position… How quickly?”

“Give me twenty minutes,” Accardi said, turning again to pick up his phone.

“Once they’re in position, I’ll coax Ivan as close as possible to the house. I want Conor and Leo upstairs defending the backyard. Vixen and Accardi can get the bottom-level windows and once Ivan is in your sights, take a shot. I don’t care who it is. Fuck, all of you do it. Fill him with holes. Once he’s down, chaos will erupt, but his men will be prepared.”

“Do you really think Ivan is humble enough to have prepared his men for the possibility he wouldn’t make it out?” Conor asked with a chuckle as he shouldered the original rifle he’d pulled out.

“Leo, if Accardi goes down?” Frankie asked.

“Get his body to safety.”

“Right,” Frankie said with a roll of his eyes. “But the rest of us?”

Leo smirked in a deadly way that reminded everyone present who the truly most dangerous man in the room was. “Annihilation. Complete. Utter. Not a soul from the opposing side remains. Related families. Distant cousins. No one breathes air again.”

Frankie turned his head and cocked a brow at Conor. “Did your dad never prepare?”

“Did anything happen after he was killed?” Conor rebutted.

“Touche. So, when he’s killed, be prepared for the unleashing of hell. The contract with Sergei can still go through if Ivan is dead and that’s what he cares about. His ‘family legacy.’”

“What do we do?” Frank Senior asked, holding an M1 Garand rifle tightly against his chest. Marge nodded beside him, her expression nearly as stern as her husband’s.

Frankie sighed. “If Ivan sees you, he’ll use you against me. I need you to stay out of the way and…”

“No.”

Frankie growled again. “Dad!”

“I am not useless here!” Frank Senior shouted. “I went to war, dammit. How many of you have run across an open field with a hundred other men in a land where you can’t speak the native language, huh? How many of you have fallen asleep in a ditch slowly filling with water that has been raining on your head for two weeks nonstop? Don’t you dare tell me there’s nothing I can do. My father couldn’t be there to hold a gun over my shoulder and provide cover fire but I’ll be damned if I don’t do it for my own son when the war zone is right outside my fucking door!”

Marge placed a hand on Frank Senior’s shaking shoulder, pride seeping from eyes in the form of tears.

“Alright,” Frankie sighed, dropping his head. “They’ll try to send people around front once they realize the rest of us are focused on the backyard. You and Mom can cover that entrance to make sure no one gets in.”

Frank Senior nodded and gripped Marge tightly about the shoulder with one arm.

“Fifteen minutes,” Accardi said, hanging up his call, though his gaze had remained on the impassioned couple the entire time.

“How many more explosives you got rigged up out there?” Leo asked.

Frankie smiled and sat back, smug. “Why on earth would I ruin the fun and tell you that?”

“Why’d I even ask?” Leo wondered.

“Wasting air,” Accardi agreed.

“Doooonnaaaattiiiiiii…” Ivan called through a megaphone outside. “Here Doooonaaatttiiii.” A long whistle turned short and sharp as if someone was calling for their lost dog. “I got something you waaannntt.”