Chapter 13 - The Reckoning of Donald Vale
The wrought-iron gates of the Rossi estate parted at seven-thirty in the evening under a heavy curtain of Chicago rain.
Parked in the circular driveway, surrounded by three black security sedans, was a rusted beige Buick LeSabre with missing hubcaps.
Inside the grand foyer, standing on the priceless Savonnerie carpet, was Donald Vale.
Donald was fifty-eight years old, his tweed overcoat frayed at the cuffs, his face flushed with the bloated veins of an active alcoholic.
He paced back and forth, clutching a battered leather briefcase against his chest like a shield.
When the heavy double doors opened, Donald spun around, expecting to see his terrified, compliant daughter Elena.
Instead, the doors revealed Declan Rossi, towering in his black wool overcoat, radiating an aura of lethal, aristocratic menace.
And beside the don walked Nora Vale Rossi, her boots clicking with iron weight, her eyes cold as winter frost.
Donald took an involuntary step back, his jaw dropping open as he recognized his elder daughter.
“Nora?” Donald gasped, his voice thin, reedy, and laced with cheap gin.
“What the hell are you doing in this house? Where is Elena?”
“Elena is currently unpacking her luggage in a private villa overlooking the Arno in Florence, Father,” Nora said calmly.
Donald blinked, his brain struggling to process the information through a haze of panic and greed.
“Florence?” Donald shrieked, his voice rising into an ugly, indignant whine.
“I traded Elena to Don Rossi to settle my debt! The agreement was for Elena!”
“The agreement was for a daughter of the Vale bloodline, Donald,” Declan’s voice rolled across the foyer like thunder.
Declan unbuttoned his overcoat, handing it to a waiting butler without taking his lethal gaze off the older man.
“And instead of an uneducated child who would have withered in this house, you inadvertently sent me a queen.”
Donald looked from the towering don to Nora, noticing for the first time the heavy platinum diamond choker gleaming at her throat.
He recognized the ancestral jewelry; every gambler in the Midwest knew the historic Rossi blood choker.
A sudden, repulsive wave of opportunistic cunning flickered across Donald’s bloodshot eyes.
“I see,” Donald said, straightening his crooked tie and attempting to assume an air of familial authority.
“So you pulled a switch. You broke the formal terms of the syndicate contract.”
“If the Commission in New York finds out that you married the wrong daughter without their blessing, Declan, it could cause… complications.”
Declan stopped three feet from Donald, his presence so massive and suffocating that the older man’s spine bowed reflexively.
“Are you attempting to extort me in my own foyer, Donald?” Declan asked, his tone dangerously polite.
“I am simply saying that Nora’s silence—and mine—has value,” Donald stammered, clutching his briefcase tighter.
“Ten million dollars. That’s all I need to clear my accounts in Vegas and disappear to Macau.”
“Pay me ten million, and I will swear under oath to the Commission that Nora was the intended bride all along.”
Nora walked forward until she stood directly between her father and the husband who ruled the city.
She looked at Donald Vale—the man who had gambled away her mother’s cancer treatment fund.
The man who had signed away her seventeen-year-old cousin to a ruthless mob boss to save his own pathetic kneecaps.
“You haven't changed in thirty years, Donald,” Nora said, her voice dropping into a register of icy, absolute finality.
“You are still a coward who sells the women of his family to buy another spin at the roulette wheel.”
“You shut your mouth, Nora!” Donald snapped, raising his hand instinctively as if she were still a child in his run-down apartment.
“I gave you life! You owe me everything!”
Before Donald’s hand could move two inches, Declan’s right hand shot out like a striking viper.
His iron fingers clamped around Donald’s wrist, twisting the bone with brutal, sickening precision.
Donald shrieked in agony, dropping to his knees as his briefcase fell open, spilling crumpled betting slips across the marble.
Declan leaned down, his face inches from Donald’s sweating, agonized features.
“If you ever raise a hand toward my wife again,” Declan whispered, the sound vibrating with raw, homicidal violence, “I will peel your skin from your muscle while you are fully conscious and feed it to my hunting hounds.”
Declan shoved Donald back onto the floor, wiping his hand on a silk handkerchief as if he had touched sewage.
Nora looked down at her father, her hazel eyes completely dry and devoid of sentimentality.
“You will take that rusted car and drive west until you hit the Nevada state line, Donald,” Nora commanded.
“Matteo has already seized your passport, your bank accounts, and your gambling credentials in every casino in North America.”
“If you ever step foot in the state of Illinois again, nobody will look for you, and nobody will find you.”
“You are not my father anymore.”
“You are merely a stranger who made the fatal mistake of walking into Don Rossi’s house.”
Donald scrambled backward across the floor on his hands and knees, sobbing with pathetic, desperate terror.
Two armed guards grabbed him by the collar of his frayed coat, hauling him out into the freezing downpour like a sack of trash.
The heavy front doors slammed shut, echoing through the cavernous foyer with the finality of a tomb lid.
Nora stood completely still, her breathing steady, though her hands curled into tight fists at her sides.
Declan walked up behind her, not saying a word, and wrapped his long, warm arms around her waist.
He pulled her firm, curvaceous back against his broad chest, resting his chin against her shoulder.
“It’s over, Nora,” Declan murmured gently into her ear.
“The past is dead.”
“This house belongs to you now.”
Nora closed her eyes, letting herself lean into his strength for the first time since she had walked into room 402 with two auto-injectors hidden under her silk.
May you like
“Take me upstairs, Declan,” Nora whispered, turning in his embrace to look up into his dark eyes.
“Your pulse is irregular again, and I believe you owe your doctor an uninterrupted night of care.”
