Chapter 10 - The Judgment on Passyunk
The room became so quiet that the dripping of a kitchen faucet thirty feet away sounded like hammer blows.
Silvio took half a step backward toward the exit, his hand twitching toward his coat pocket.
Before his fingers could touch his lapel, Marco stepped out from the shadows beside the door.
The cold muzzle of Marco’s FN SCAR pressed firmly against the base of Silvio’s skull.
"Hands on the table, Underboss," Marco whispered into his ear.
Silvio froze.
A drop of sweat formed at his hairline, rolled slowly down his temple, and dripped off his jowl.
"Nicholas..." Silvio pleaded, raising his trembling hands palms-out toward his Don.
"Nicholas, whatever she's telling you, she's confused."
"She's been gone twenty-five years."
"She doesn't know how the world works anymore!"
Nicholas did not raise his voice.
He walked over to the long mahogany conference table, pulled out the heavy leather-bound ledger, and dropped it onto the wood.
The heavy book landed with a dull thud that echoed off the framed portraits of long-dead dons lining the walls.
Nicholas flipped the ledger open to page eighty-four.
He placed Antonio Moretti’s handwritten diary directly on top of it, alongside the microcassette recorder.
"Page eighty-four, Silvio," Nicholas said, leaning his knuckles on the table.
"Read the ink."
Silvio’s eyes flicked down to the open page.
His knees visibly buckled.
"Your father... your father was paranoid, Nicholas," Silvio stammered, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
"He didn't trust his own shadow after the war with New York!"
"He saw conspiracies everywhere!"
"Did he see conspiracies in your Swiss bank account, Silvio?" Nicholas asked.
Nicholas pressed the play button on the cassette recorder.
The tape hiss filled the room.
Then Antonio Moretti’s raspy, unmistakable voice spoke from beyond the grave, recorded in the summer of 1999:
"Silvio took two hundred thousand from Victor on July fourteenth.
The transfer originated from Credit Suisse, routing number four-eight-nine.
He gave Victor the security codes for my Carlisle Street residence.
He thinks I don't know.
He thinks because we shared bread as boys, I am blind to his greed.
I will keep him alive until my son takes the chair.
When Nicholas finds this, Silvio will pay the debt with compound interest."
The cassette clicked off.
The four capos in the room looked at Silvio with expressions of cold, merciless disgust.
In the mafia code, violence was accepted.
Murder was business.
Territory was negotiable.
Betraying the Don’s family and handing his seven-year-old child to wolves was an unforgivable sin that carried a mandatory sentence.
Tonio stepped forward, his eyes burning with fury.
"You bastard," Tonio spat.
"We buried an empty box because of you."
"We wore black ties for a woman who was living in a diner because of your greed."
Silvio fell to his knees, his hands clutching the edge of the conference table.
"Nicholas, please!" the old man sobbed, tears cutting through his makeup and powder.
"Victor threatened my family!"
"He told me that if I didn't help him force Antonio out, he would have my sons drowned in the Schuylkill River!"
"I had no choice!"
"You had twenty-five years to tell me," Nicholas said softly, looking down at his godfather.
"Twenty-five years you sat across from me on Christmas Eve."
"Twenty-five years you poured my father’s wine."
"Nine years you stood beside me as my Underboss while I mourned a mother who was washing dishes three hours away."
Laura walked over to where Silvio knelt.
She looked down at the man who had traded her life for offshore bearer bonds.
She reached down, picked up Silvio’s dropped silver-tipped cane, and leaned on it lightly.
"You always were a coward, Silvio," Laura said, her voice filled with pity rather than wrath.
"Antonio should have fed you to the docks in ninety-nine."
"Where is Victor right now?" Nicholas asked, his tone snapping back to business.
Silvio looked up, his face gray as wet cement.
"He's in Atlantic City," Silvio wheezed, desperate to offer anything that might buy him another breath.
"The Grand Venetian Hotel."
"The penthouse suite."
"The Atlantic City Commission meeting is tonight at eight."
"Victor called an emergency session of the five families."
Nicholas frowned.
"The meeting was scheduled for next week."
"He moved it up," Silvio confessed, his hands shaking violently.
"He heard about the fire on Devil's Ridge."
"His hit squad reported that the lodge burned with four bodies inside."
"Victor thinks you, Marco, Robert, and Laura are all dead in the ash."
"He's walking into that commission meeting tonight to declare the Philadelphia seat vacant."
"He’s going to invoke dynastic succession and take the Don's chair before midnight."
Nicholas smiled.
It was not a warm smile.
It was the cold, terrifying grin of an apex predator watching its prey step into the center of a steel snare.
"Tonio," Nicholas said, turning to his senior capo.
"Boss," Tonio responded, standing straight.
"Take Silvio down to the meat locker in the basement," Nicholas commanded.
"Take his phone."
"Take his shoes."
"Tie him to a butcher's chair."
"If he makes a sound before eight PM, put a rag in his mouth."
Silvio began to weep hysterically as two large men hauled him to his feet by the elbows.
"Nicholas, please! I'm your family! I'm your blood!"
"You are a ledger entry that has finally been settled, Silvio," Nicholas said, turning his back.
Nicholas looked at his watch.
It was twelve-forty-five.
"Marco, prep three black Suburbans," Nicholas said.
May you like
"We’re taking the Atlantic City Expressway."
"We have a family meeting to attend."
