Chapter 10 - The Cross-Examination of Judas
The sub-basement beneath the Thorne estate had once been a wine cellar during the Prohibition era, built with four-foot-thick walls of reinforced limestone that muffled any sound from escaping into the world above.
A single bare tungsten bulb hung from an exposed wire in the center of the vaulted ceiling, casting harsh, yellow shadows across the damp concrete floor.
In the center of the room, two heavy wooden chairs were bolted to the foundation.
Vincent Castiglione sat in the left chair, his right hand crudely wrapped in gauze, his torso bound with heavy industrial zip-ties that dug deep into his flesh.
In the right chair sat Richard Vance.
Richard was shivering so violently that the wooden legs of his chair rattled against the concrete.
His expensive tuxedo was ruined, his face swollen from crying, his eyes darting frantically toward the dark corners of the cellar where Marco and Elias stood like silent statues of judgment.
The heavy iron door at the top of the stairs creaked open, and the rhythmic sound of boots descending the stone steps broke the agonizing silence.
Rose entered first, followed closely by Gabriel.
Rose had removed her velvet coat, revealing a tailored black waistcoat that hugged her frame, the ruby on her finger catching the dim yellow light like an ember.
She carried the black leather-bound ledger under her arm.
Gabriel pulled a heavy wooden stool from the shadows and placed it directly in front of the two bound men.
Rose did not sit.
She tossed the black ledger into Richard’s lap with a wet, heavy slap.
“Open it, Richard,” Rose said, her voice slicing through the damp chill of the cellar.
Richard looked down at the book as if it were a coiled rattlesnake.
“Rose... please,” Richard whimpered, tears pouring down his unshaven cheeks.
“I am your flesh and blood.”
“Everything I did, I did to save our legacy!”
“Vance Shipping was slipping through our fingers!”
“The banks were closing our credit lines!”
“I had to find leverage!”
Vincent Castiglione let out a ragged, bloody cough from the adjacent chair and spat on the floor.
“Shut your lying mouth, Vance,” Vincent growled, his voice thick with contempt.
“You didn't do it to save your shipping lines, you pathetic piece of trash.”
“You did it because you lost four million dollars at our private baccarat tables in Atlantic City over a single weekend.”
“My father told you that if you didn't pay by the end of the quarter, we would cut your limbs off and feed them to the stray dogs behind the boardwalk.”
Rose turned her gaze toward Vincent, her eyes narrowing into cold slits.
“Tell me about the Northern Star,” Rose demanded.
Vincent turned his bruised face toward Gabriel, knowing that his only chance of surviving the next hour was complete, unfiltered truth.
“Richard came to my father with the plan,” Vincent said, gasping for breath against the tight zip-ties.
“He said he had access to Gabriel’s munitions manifest.”
“He offered to sink the ship with military thermite so he could collect the maritime insurance payout and split the harbor routes with us.”
“He swore to my father that Gabriel would blame our family for the explosion, which would give Richard the excuse to broker this goddamn peace marriage.”
“The marriage was never about peace!”
“It was an infiltration!”
“Richard promised us that once his daughter was inside the master suite, she would drug Gabriel’s nightcap, open the terrace gates, and let my crew finish the job!”
The cellar fell into absolute, suffocating silence.
Rose looked down at her father, who was pressing his chin into his chest, unable to look his daughter in the eye.
“You were going to make me an assassin,” Rose said, her voice dropping into a register so quiet, so devoid of human emotion, that it was more terrifying than a scream.
“You were going to drug the man I married, have him butchered in front of me, and leave me to take the blame when his syndicate demanded blood.”
“I didn't have a choice, Rose!” Richard screamed, thrashing against his restraints like a madman.
“They were going to kill me!”
“Do you understand that?”
“I had men waiting outside my office with baseball bats every single afternoon!”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“You were supposed to die like a man, Richard,” Gabriel’s voice rumbled from the shadows behind Rose.
Gabriel stepped into the yellow light, pulling a fountain pen and a set of legal transfer documents from the interior pocket of his vest.
He placed the documents on top of the black ledger on Richard’s knees.
“These documents transfer one hundred percent of Vance Shipping, every warehouse, every container crane, and every municipal port permit to Rose Vance Thorne,” Gabriel stated, his voice flat and absolute.
“You will sign every single page.”
Richard stared down at the documents, his breath coming in shallow, frantic wheezes.
“If I sign... if I give you everything... will you let me go?” Richard asked, a desperate glimmer of hope flickering in his red-rimmed eyes.
“Will you let me leave the country?”
Gabriel looked toward Rose, bowing his head slightly.
“The decision belongs to my wife,” Gabriel said.
“Her word is law in this house.”
Richard looked up at his daughter, pleading with his eyes, begging for the mercy he had never once shown her.
“Rose... please, baby,” Richard whispered.
“I am your father.”
“Give me a second chance.”
Rose took the fountain pen from Gabriel’s hand and unscrewed the cap.
She held the pen out to her father.
Marco stepped forward from the shadows, sliced the zip-tie binding Richard’s right hand, and forced his fingers around the heavy pen.
With trembling, jerky strokes, Richard signed his name on twelve different legal deeds, transferring every asset his family had owned for three generations into his daughter’s sole possession.
When the final signature was complete, Rose gathered the documents, checked each page with the cold eye of a master accountant, and handed them to Gabriel.
“Now let me go,” Richard sobbed, collapsing back against the chair.
“Please, Rose, call a cab and let me go to the airport.”
Rose leaned down until her face was inches from his.
“You are not going to the airport, Richard,” Rose said softly.
“And Gabriel is not going to kill you.”
A wave of relief washed over Richard’s face, but Rose’s next words turned that relief into pure, unadulterated hell.
“You are going to walk out the front gates of this estate with exactly forty dollars in your pocket,” Rose continued, her crimson lips curling into a predatory smile.
“You will have no name, no credit, no properties, and no security.”
“And the moment you step onto the sidewalk, I am going to release this black ledger to the federal prosecutor’s office and to every news outlet in Manhattan.”
“The feds will issue a federal warrant for your arrest for the murder of the four crewmen on the Northern Star.”
Rose turned her gaze toward Vincent Castiglione.
“And Vincent here is going to call his father right now,” Rose added.
“He is going to tell Don Salvatore that Richard Vance stole three million dollars in mob loans, blew it in Atlantic City, and tried to set up the Castiglione family to take the fall for a federal murder charge.”
Vincent’s bloodied face twisted into a cruel, feral grin.
“With pleasure,” Vincent wheezed.
“My father will put a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bounty on his head before the sun sets.”
Richard’s eyes rolled back in his head as the full, monstrous reality of his fate crashed down upon him.
He was not being given a quick, painless death in a mob basement.
He was being cast out into the freezing streets of the city he had terrorized, completely penniless, hunted by both the federal government and every hitman on the eastern seaboard.
He would spend every remaining hour of his miserable life looking over his shoulder, sleeping in cardboard boxes like the ones his daughter had fallen into, waiting for the bullet that would inevitably find him.
“No!” Richard shrieked, thrashing violently as Marco grabbed him by the collar of his ruined suit.
“Kill me, Rose!”
“Put a bullet in my head!”
“Don't throw me to the wolves!”
“You are the one who fed me to the wolves, Richard,” Rose said, her voice ringing with absolute finality.
“I just learned how to lead the pack.”
She turned her back on her father’s screaming form as Marco dragged him toward the service exit.
Gabriel stepped beside her, his arm wrapping around her waist, pulling her against his side.
“Elias,” Gabriel commanded without looking back.
“Cut Vincent’s ties, give him his phone, and let him deliver our message to his father.”
“Tell Don Salvatore that the southern docks belong to Rose Thorne now.”
“If a single Castiglione crosses fourteenth street, we will pave the harbor with their bones.”
Rose looked up into Gabriel’s dark, fathomless eyes, feeling the heavy platinum band on her finger press against his palm.
May you like
The storm had passed.
The altar was broken.
