Chapter 9 - The Wolf Bares Its Teeth
Vincent Corvo froze with his hand resting inches inside his charcoal blazer.
He knew the deadly reputation of the man sitting behind that desk.
He had witnessed me clear rooms of armed rivals without spilling a drop of my own blood.
Slowly, with trembling fingers, Corvo withdrew his empty hand and raised both palms into the air.
“Daniel... you don’t know the whole story,” Corvo stammered, his legal arrogance crumbling into desperate panic.
“I did what was necessary to preserve this syndicate!”
“Nine years ago, you were getting soft!”
“You were talking about legitimate investments, selling off the docks, retiring to Italy with a wife and a child!”
“You were going to dissolve an empire that took three generations of the Whitmore family to build!”
“So you forged federal intelligence to frame my wife?” I asked, standing up from my chair.
“You threatened to murder her unborn child in a dark alley?”
“You paid backwoods hillbilly thugs to keep her shivering in a shack without medicine?”
Corvo’s eyes darted frantically toward the double executive doors behind him.
“She made you weak, Daniel!” he hissed, his desperation finally morphing into vicious, unmasked hatred.
“Look at what you’ve become!”
“You abandoned New York for two days to chase a dying ghost in Kentucky!”
“While you were playing knight in shining armor for a ruined woman, the real world moved on!”
“The Five Families have already voted on your leadership!”
“Dominic Moretti holds thirty of your lieutenants by the throat!”
“You don’t run New York anymore, Daniel; you’re an obsolete relic sitting in an empty glass cage!”
Before Corvo could reach the doorknob, the heavy frosted double doors swung inward on their hinges.
Standing in the doorway was not his security detail, but Marcus, flanked by four heavily armed syndicate loyalists.
Marcus held a black tactical submachine gun leveled directly at Corvo’s chest.
Corvo stumbled backward, hitting the edge of the mahogany desk, his breath coming in jagged, terrified gasps.
“Marcus...” Corvo pleaded, looking at my oldest enforcer.
“Don’t do this. Moretti will pay you five million dollars to walk out of this building.”
“I’d rather take a bullet through the skull than take a single dime from a rat who betrayed Emily,” Marcus growled.
I walked slowly around the desk until I stood inches from Corvo’s trembling face.
“Where is Dominic Moretti right now, Vincent?”
Corvo clamped his jaw shut, glaring at me with the bitter spite of a cornered animal.
“Kill me, Daniel,” he spat.
“Kill me right now.”
“Because Dominic already knows you found Emily.”
“Silas called me before your fancy helicopter even left the state line.”
“Do you really think Dominic is sitting in Brooklyn waiting for your move?”
A cold, horrific dread struck the base of my neck.
My heart plummeted into an icy abyss as the pieces clicked together in my mind.
“What did you do, Vincent?” I demanded, grabbing his silk tie and slamming his skull back against the desk.
“What did you do?!”
Corvo laughed, a bloody, manic chuckle bubbling from his lips.
“Dominic has a cousin who works air traffic control for the federal aviation sector in Virginia.”
“The moment your diplomatic medical flight touched down at Dulles, Moretti’s tracking cell had the hospital coordinates.”
“You thought you were being clever leaving her in northern Virginia under a skeleton guard?”
“Moretti dispatched thirty hitters in three vans two hours ago.”
“By the time you fly back down there, Daniel, your little bastard daughter and your dying wife will be floating in the Potomac River!”
I did not waste a single second striking him.
I drove my fist into his jaw with enough force to shatter his teeth, sending him crashing unconscious to the floor.
“Marcus!” I roared, turning toward my commander with a ferocity that shook the glass windows.
“Get the jet back on the runway!”
“No time for the jet, boss!” Marcus shouted, already pulling his tactical radio from his belt.
“Weather over Virginia just closed Dulles Airport down with severe thunderstorm cells!”
“We take the armored Suburbans and drive!”
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“Get every loyal shooter in the tri-state area on the interstate right now!” I commanded, sprinting through the double doors.
“If anything touches that hospital, I will paint the state of Virginia red with Moretti blood!”
