Chapter 5 - The Dark Wool Jacket And The Secret In The Lining
The freezing rain soaked through my suit jacket within seconds, chilling me to the bone, but I didn't move from the edge of the roof.
I stood staring into the empty driveway where the black sedan had vanished into the rainy Long Island night, my mind racing at a million miles an hour.
He was wounded.
The blood on the blueprints proved my bullets had found their mark. Whoever was hiding in my house—whoever had executed Isabelle outside the Garden City preschool and tortured my daughters into silence—was currently bleeding out in the back of a speeding car, trying to find a doctor willing to stitch up a bullet wound without asking questions.
In the New York underworld, a gunshot wound always left a trail.
And I knew every back-alley surgeon from Manhattan to Montauk.
I turned away from the parapet, walked back across the rain-swept roof, and picked up the discarded dark wool jacket lying near the edge.
I brought it inside, slamming the roof access door shut against the howling storm, and carried the garment down to the brightly lit security control room on the second floor.
The control room was a bunker of high-tech monitors, server racks, and multi-angle security feeds covering every square inch of the estate.
I tossed the bloody jacket onto the central stainless-steel console, switched on the overhead task lighting, and pulled on a pair of latex gloves from the medical kit on the wall.
It was a high-end designer jacket. Italian wool. Custom-tailored. The kind of expensive garment worn by high-powered executives, elite attorneys, or syndicate capos who wanted to look respectable while orchestrating executions.
I started searching the pockets.
Right pocket: empty.
Left pocket: a crumpled deli receipt from a sandwich shop in Manhasset, timestamped 8:42 PM—less than an hour before I arrived home.
Inner breast pocket: a sleek, high-end gold-plated Montblanc fountain pen.
I pulled the pen out and examined it closely under the halogen lamp.
Engraved along the polished gold cap were three initials.
A.V.
My breath caught in my throat.
A.V.
Anthony Vance.
My senior legal counsel. The man who had managed my corporate trust funds, drafted my multi-million-dollar real estate acquisitions, and sat across the mahogany table from me every single Tuesday afternoon for the past eight years.
Anthony Vance, the mild-mannered, bespectacled lawyer who had wept at Isabelle’s funeral.
Anthony Vance, who knew every security code, every travel schedule, and every blind spot in this mansion.
The room began to spin.
For eight years, I had trusted Anthony with my finances, my legal defense, and my family's security.
And all along, the snake was nesting right inside my own operation.
I walked over to the main computer terminal, bypassing the biometric login with my master administrator code, and pulled up Anthony Vance’s digital personnel file.
I checked his home address, his banking records, his corporate communications logs, and his private asset holdings.
Then I found it.
A secret offshore bank account tied to a shell company in the Cayman Islands.
And the date of the largest incoming wire transfer into that account?
Fourteen months ago.
Three days after Isabelle was murdered.
The amount?
Five million dollars.
Paid from a parent corporation registered in Zurich—the exact same corporate entity that had tried to execute a hostile takeover of my shipping logistics firm last year.
The puzzle pieces slammed together with terrifying, blinding clarity.
Anthony hadn't just been my lawyer.
He was working for my greatest corporate rival—a syndicate cartel trying to break my grip on the New York shipping ports.
Isabelle had discovered the financial paper trail linking Anthony to the cartel. She had threatened to expose him to me.
So Anthony had hired a professional hitman to ambush her outside the preschool, and then used my own security network and threats of violence to silence my three daughters, ensuring they would never tell me what they saw.
A cold, ruthless fury washed over me, drowning out every ounce of civilized hesitation left in my soul.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, unlocked the secure satellite line, and dialed Marcus, my head of security.
Marcus answered on the first ring.
“Boss? Is everything alright? We just dropped Mrs. Romano and the girls off at the upstate safe house. They're secure.”
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“Forget the safe house for a second, Marcus,” I said, my voice dropping into a lethal, deadened register. “I want every single man we have deployed tonight. I want every highway, bridge, and tunnel out of Long Island locked down tighter than a federal prison.”
“What’s happened, Mr. Romano?” Marcus asked, hearing the absolute menace in my tone.
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