Chapter 7 - The Balance of Iron and Blood
Leo Rossi slowly lowered the crystal glass onto the silver tray.
He raised both hands to shoulder height, his rings gleaming under the chandelier.
“You’re getting paranoid in your old age, Damon.”
“Am I?” Damon asked.
Damon stepped to the mahogany table and dropped the heavy black ledger onto the wood.
The impact sounded like a pistol shot in the grand room.
Dust rose from the worn leather binding.
Leo’s eyes flicked down to the gold-embossed serial numbers on the spine.
His smile vanished instantly.
“Where did you get that?”
“From the bottom of an extraction locker your father spent twenty years trying to burn,” Damon said.
Anna stepped forward until she stood at Damon’s right shoulder.
Her eyes were fixed on the man who had ordered her father hunted like an animal.
“My father kept every wire transfer,” Anna said, her voice clear, hard, and entirely steady.
“Every container number from the Nineveh port authority.”
“Every cash delivery your father signed for in the basement of the Saint Jude parish.”
Leo’s gaze drifted from the ledger up to Anna’s face.
A slow, vicious sneer pulled at his lips.
“You really think you’re a Marino, little girl?”
“I don't care about the Marino name,” Anna replied without blinking.
“I care about the twenty-five years my father spent looking over his shoulder while you bought your suits with his blood.”
Leo chuckled, turning his attention back to Damon.
“Do you honestly think anyone on the five-family council will care about a dead soldier’s notebook?”
“The council won't see it,” Damon said.
“Because by morning, the federal organized crime division in Washington will have digital copies on every server they own.”
Leo’s expression tightened into pure malice.
“You wouldn't dare.”
“You’d destroy your own family to settle a debt from twenty-five years ago?”
“My family died the night my father sold Anthony to a private contractor,” Damon said.
“What I’m running now isn't a family.”
“It’s an execution squad.”
One of Leo’s drivers made a sudden, frantic twitch toward his shoulder holster.
Marcus Vance didn't even shift his footing.
The combat shotgun roared once.
The heavy blast ripped through the driver’s shoulder, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into the antique china cabinet.
Shattered crystal rained down onto the Persian rug like hail.
The second driver instantly dropped to his knees, his hands locked behind his head, screaming in terror.
The room filled with the acrid, choking stench of burned gunpowder and cordite.
James Marino didn't flinch at the sound of the blast.
The old man slowly stood up from his chair, using his cane to support his weight.
“Leo,” James said into the smoke.
Leo backed up until his spine hit the carved mantelpiece of the marble fireplace.
“Stay back, old man!”
“Your father begged for mercy in this exact room forty years ago,” James said, his sightless face turned toward the mantelpiece.
“He begged my father not to drown him in the canal after he was caught skimming from the union pensions.”
“We showed him mercy.”
“And thirty years later, he paid us back by trying to murder my brother outside Mosul.”
James took three slow, measured steps across the floor.
“Did you really believe that Keller would take your money, Leo?”
Leo’s breath came in ragged, shallow gasps.
“Keller took two hundred thousand dollars in cash this afternoon!”
A radio on Damon’s belt crackled to life.
Keller’s voice came through the small speaker, sharp and professional.
“Perimeter secured, Mr. Marino.”
“We’ve neutralized the four vehicles on the south lawn.”
“Rossi’s men are disarmed and locked in the maintenance shed.”
Leo’s face drained of every ounce of color.
The realization hit him like a physical blow.
He had not infiltrated the fortress.
He had walked into an abattoir.
“You set this up,” Leo whispered, staring at Damon.
“Anthony set it up,” Damon corrected him coldly.
“Twenty-five years ago, my uncle realized that you and your father would eventually come for the ledger.”
“He left instructions with Marcus.”
“The day Anna came to this estate was the day Marcus triggered the contingency.”
Anna reached into her wool coat and pulled out the small microcassette recorder.
She held it up so Leo could see the yellow masking tape.
“My father had a message for you, Leo.”
“He knew your father would die before he could face justice.”
“So he left this for the son.”
Anna pressed the play button.
Her father’s gravelly, calm voice cut through the silence of the smoke-filled room.
“Leo. If you’re listening to this, you’re standing in my brother’s house.”
“You think you’re smart because you inherited a criminal empire you didn't have the guts to build.”
“You think my daughter is weak because she grew up with clean hands.”
“Look out the dining room window, Leo.”
“Look at the river.”
Leo’s eyes darted involuntarily toward the floor-to-ceiling glass doors overlooking the Hudson.
In the dark water below the cliffs, three blue tactical strobes cut through the rain.
Federal patrol cutters were idling against the private dock.
May you like
“Keep moving, Leo,” the dead man’s voice rasped from the speaker.
“Because the pain is about to start.”
