Chapter 12 - The Justice of the Dispossessed
The courtyard of Falcone Manor looked like a graveyard after a hurricane.
Freezing rain had begun to fall again, mixing with the slush and turning the gravel driveway into a slick slurry of black mud and crimson puddles.
Three burning SUVs cast flickering orange shadows across the granite walls of the compound.
Twenty armed Falcone guards in black tactical gear stood in a wide circle, their assault rifles pointed toward the center of the forecourt.
In the center of the gravel knelt Don Vincent Moretti.
His expensive cashmere coat was ripped to shreds, his face swollen and bruised from Gabriel’s interrogations.
Gabriel stood over him, tapping a cold pistol barrel against Moretti's wet temple, whistling a mournful Italian aria into the freezing wind.
When Roman stepped out from the terrace archway with Maeve beside him, the guards parted like the sea.
Declan followed closely behind, his shoulder heavily bandaged, an automatic weapon resting loosely in his uninjured left arm.
Don Moretti looked up, spitting blood into the slush.
His small, piggy eyes moved from Roman to Maeve, his jaw trembling with a toxic blend of shock and terror.
"Roman... Roman, please," Moretti pleaded, his voice breaking into a pathetic whine.
"We can settle this with the Five Families council in New York."
"I will surrender the South Boston trucking lines."
"I'll give you fifty percent of the Logan airport freight manifests."
Roman stopped five paces away, his hands folded behind his back.
"You kidnapped my sister three years ago, Vincent."
"You hid her in an olive press in Palermo, then traded her like contraband across state lines."
"And when that failed, you brought thirty men to murder my brothers under my own roof."
"You forfeited your right to arbitration thirty-six months ago."
Moretti’s eyes darted frantically toward Maeve.
"Miss Kelly!" Moretti shouted, dragging his knees through the frozen gravel toward her boots.
"You're a good girl from Southie!"
"Your father was a union welder under my cousin's local branch!"
"You know the law of the neighborhood!"
"Tell them to show mercy!"
"I have grandchildren in Quincy!"
Maeve stood in her cashmere coat, her boots planted firmly in the slush.
She looked down at the man who had ordered men to kick open doors, who had held young girls in dark cellars, and who had profited off the desperate poverty of working families for four decades.
She remembered the loan sharks coming to her father’s funeral, demanding their cut before the dirt hit the casket.
She remembered the cold winter nights with no heating oil because Moretti’s fuel distributors inflated the prices during blizzards.
"My father worked forty years in the dry docks with broken lungs," Maeve said, her voice cutting through the howl of the ocean wind like an ice pick.
"He never begged a man for mercy."
"He never pointed a gun at a sick child’s window."
"You didn't offer mercy to Elena Falcone when you kept her in an unheated cellar."
"You didn't offer mercy when you threatened to execute my sister Clara at St. Jude Memorial."
Moretti’s face went pale gray.
"Maeve... please..."
Maeve looked away from the groveling boss and met Roman's dark, piercing gaze.
"He is not a man, Roman," Maeve said quietly.
"He is a disease."
"And you don't negotiate with an infection."
"You sterilize the wound."
Roman’s eyes flared with pure, lethal pride.
He didn't draw his pistol.
He looked across the gravel at Gabriel.
Gabriel smiled, his languid, terrifying smirk returning to his lips.
"With pleasure, brother," Gabriel murmured.
Gabriel kicked Moretti forward onto his stomach, pulled zip-ties around the mobster's wrists with a harsh ratcheting sound, and nodded to two tactical guards.
"Take him down to the salt cove," Roman ordered coldly.
"Put him in the rigid boat he used to track my sister."
"Set the throttle toward the open sea without fuel reserves or a rudder."
"Let the Atlantic decide whether Vincent Moretti deserves to see the sunrise."
Moretti screamed and thrashed as the guards dragged him down the cliffside path, his desperate curses swallowed by the roar of the surf.
The courtyard fell dead silent, save for the crackle of burning vehicle tires.
Declan walked to the center of the driveway, spitting into the snow.
"That ends the Moretti syndicate," Declan growled, rolling his wounded shoulder.
"The South Boston docks belong to the Falcone family now."
Roman didn't look at the burning cars.
He turned completely toward Maeve, stepping into her space until the falling rain was blocked by his tall frame.
He reached out, his bare fingers brushing cold snowflakes from her eyelashes.
"You belong here now, Maeve," Roman said, his voice dropping into a deep, gravelly promise.
"Not as an employee."
"Not as a servant."
"As the heart of this house."
"The woman who stood beside us when the empire caught fire."
Maeve felt her breath catch in her throat.
The heat passing between them was blinding, melting the frost on her skin.
"We still have to clean up the foyer, Roman," she whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
Roman smiled—a genuine, radiant smile that completely transformed his austere, dangerous face.
"Declan can clean the foyer," Roman said, turning his head toward his brother.
"Declan can learn how to operate an industrial mop."
Declan let out an indignant roar of laughter that echoed off the granite walls, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Me?"
"A five-hundred-million-dollar enforcer on mop duty?"
May you like
"Get inside," Gabriel called from the terrace, tossing a fresh box of kitchen matches to Declan.
"Before Miss Kelly docks our wages for wasting daylight."
