Chapter 9 - Fortress in the Pine Barrens
The Grand Council of the Five Boroughs convened at midnight inside an abandoned
subway power station beneath Lower Manhattan.
The cavernous brick vault was illuminated by hanging industrial lamps, guarded
by forty heavily armed neutral sentries.
Around a massive concrete table sat the five supreme bosses of the New York
underworld: the heads of the Italian, Irish, Russian, and Albanian syndicates.
Valentin walked into the vault wearing a tailored black three-piece suit, his
posture straight, radiating an aura of terrifying majesty.
Walking at his side, dressed in an elegant black wool coat, her head held high,
was me.
Boris Rostov sat across the table.
He was sixty-five years old, with slicked-back silver hair, cold reptilian eyes,
and a cruel mouth that had ordered the deaths of dozens of men. Beside him sat
two corrupt council bosses who had protected his operations for a decade.
“Valentin,” Boris sneered, leaning back in his iron chair. “You bring a domestic
servant to the Grand Council? Have you lost your mind along with your wife?”
Valentin didn't answer.
He walked up to the center of the table and dropped the micro-SD card directly
onto the concrete.
“Play it, Don Moretti,” Valentin said to the senior Italian boss presiding over
the meeting.
Moretti slotted the drive into the council’s forensic monitor.
Within sixty seconds, the screen displayed the financial wire transfers: sixty
million dollars siphoned from the council’s mutual maritime fund into Boris
Rostov’s private accounts in Panama, along with audio recordings of Boris
discussing the assassination of the council bosses themselves.
The room went dead silent.
Don Moretti slowly rose to his feet, looking across the table at Boris with
pure, murderous disgust.
“You stole from the mutual accounts, Boris,” Moretti whispered, his hand
drifting toward his shoulder holster. “And you murdered Nadia Sokolov to trigger
a gang war that would make you the sole boss of New York.”
Boris’s face went completely gray. His hands trembled against the concrete
table.
“It’s a forgery! The girl forged it!” Boris screamed, pointing at me.
“My father died with those files in his hands, Boris,” I spoke up, my voice
ringing clear and steady off the brick arches. “You had him shot in his driveway
because he refused to delete the ledgers.”
Valentin took a single, deliberate step forward, towering over the old Russian
warlord.
“Under Clause Seven of the Five Boroughs Charter,” Valentin announced, his voice
booming like an iron gavel:
“The House of Rostov is declared rogue. Their territory is forfeited. Their
assets are seized. And Boris Rostov is sentenced to open execution.”
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The council bosses stood up in unison, turning their backs on Boris Rostov.
The old man was completely, utterly alone.
