Chapter 7 - The Sterile Room And The Traitor’s Confession
The examination room was blindingly bright, lit by an overhead surgical halogen lamp that cast harsh, unforgiving shadows across the white tile floor.
Standing over a stainless-steel operating table was a terrified-looking, middle-aged man in green scrubs—evidently a disgraced back-alley surgeon—holding a pair of surgical tweezers dripping with dark red gauze.
And lying flat on his back on the table, clutching his bleeding left side with a face as white as paper, was Anthony Vance.
His expensive custom-tailored suit was soaked in blood, his wire-rimmed glasses were cracked down the center, and his breathing came in shallow, panicked gasps.
When he saw me standing in the doorway with a revolver pointed directly at his chest, all the color remaining in his face vanished entirely.
“D-Dominic...” Anthony choked out, his voice a weak, pathetic rasp. “Please... put the gun down.”
The surgeon dropped his tweezers onto the metal tray with a deafening clatter, throwing his hands up in the air and backing away toward the corner of the room.
“I-I didn't know anything about this!” the surgeon stammered, his voice trembling in sheer terror. “He just walked in bleeding! He said he was in a car accident! I’m a doctor, I swear to God—”
“Shut your mouth and get out of here,” I ordered coldly, never taking my eyes off Anthony.
The doctor didn't need to be told twice. He tore off his blood-stained gloves, bolted past me through the delivery door, and vanished into the rainy alleyway within seconds.
The heavy metal door clicked shut, leaving just the two of us inside the sterile, humming room.
I walked slowly toward the operating table, the rubber soles of my shoes squeaking softly against the white tile.
I stopped two feet away from the table, looking down at the man who had managed my legal affairs, shared my meals, and plotted the execution of my wife.
“Anthony,” I said softly, the calm in my voice far more terrifying than any scream. “You look like you’ve had a rough night.”
Anthony winced, pressing his hand harder against his wound as fresh blood bubbled between his fingers.
“Dominic... listen to me... it wasn't personal,” Anthony whispered, his eyes wide with desperate survival instinct. “It was business. The Zurich group... they wanted your shipping ports. They needed total control of the Northeast corridor. They knew you’d never sell voluntarily.”
“So you killed my wife?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Isabelle... she found the transfer slips,” Anthony admitted, a pathetic tremor shaking his lower lip. “She confronted me in her car outside the preschool. She said she was going to tell you everything. What was I supposed to do, Dominic? If I let her walk away, they would have killed me and my family. It was her or me.”
“It was her,” I repeated, the words tasting like poison. “And then you stayed in my house. You watched my daughters cry every single day for fourteen months. You threatened them into silence, Anthony. You used my own home to torture my children.”
“I had to keep them quiet!” Anthony cried out, tears finally spilling over his eyelids. “If they talked, the cartel would have wiped out your entire family! I was protecting them, in a twisted way—!”
“Don't you dare talk about protection,” I snarled, stepping forward and pressing the cold steel barrel of my revolver directly against the center of his forehead.
Anthony froze. His breath caught in his throat, and his eyes crossed as he stared up at the black ring of the gun barrel.
“Please, Dominic... think of the girls,” Anthony whimpered, pissing himself as warm urine began to soak through his blood-soaked trousers. “If you kill me now, you go to prison. You leave your daughters orphans. Is that what Isabelle would have wanted?”
I stared down at him for a long, agonizing moment.
My finger squeezed down slightly on the trigger, the hammer pulling back with a sharp, heavy click.
Every muscle in my body screamed to pull the trigger and blow his treacherous brains across the sterile white wall.
It would be so easy.
One twitch of my finger, and the architect of my family's ruin would cease to exist.
Then, a flash of memory crossed my mind.
Little Sophie and Olivia, holding onto Grace’s hands in the kitchen, trembling in fear.
If I killed him right here, in a back-alley medical clinic, the law would hunt me down. I would be dragged away from my daughters just as they were finally starting to heal. They had lost their mother; they couldn't afford to lose me to a prison cell or a manhunt.
Anthony Vance didn't deserve a quick death in a sterile room.
He deserved to lose everything he had ever built, just like he had stolen everything from me.
Slowly, deliberately, I lowered the barrel of the revolver.
Anthony let out a massive, shuddering sigh of relief, his head falling back against the metal table as he wept openly.
“You’re right, Anthony,” I said, my voice dropping back into its cold, icy boardroom cadence. “I’m not going to kill you tonight. That would be too merciful.”
Before he could comprehend what I meant, the delivery door slammed open, and Marcus rushed into the room followed by two heavy-set security operatives in tactical gear.
“Boss! Are you alright?” Marcus asked, his eyes darting between Anthony and me.
“I’m fine, Marcus,” I said, sliding my revolver back into the leather holster beneath my suit jacket. “Bag him. Put a hood over his head and throw him in the back of the van.”
“Where are we taking him, Mr. Romano?” Marcus asked, a grim smile touching the corner of his mouth.
“To the federal marshals,” I said coldly, turning toward the exit. “Along with the five million dollars in his Cayman Islands account, the gold-plated pen found in his jacket, and a signed confession detailing every single crime the Zurich cartel has committed on American soil.”
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I paused at the doorway, glancing back one last time at the pathetic, bleeding traitor whimpering on the operating table.
“Anthony traded his soul for five million dollars,” I told Marcus. “Let’s see how much his corporate masters are willing to pay to keep him from singing to a federal judge.”
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