Chapter 3 - The Cold Slab of the Foundry LedgerMy joints screamed.
The six-year rust in my knees and the deep, dormant ache in my lower vertebrae felt like someone was dragging an iron rasp across raw marrow. My six-foot-three frame swayed, towering over the shattered table and the groveling attorney, but my grip on the chair back was iron.
The blood rushed back into my thighs with the heat of liquid slag.
Julian Vance was crawling toward the double doors, dragging his shattered knees, leaving two dark red streaks across the Persian runner.
“Lorenzo... Lorenzo, wait,” he wept, the patrician polish completely dissolving into snot and saliva. “The board... the Five Families... they ratified the succession protocol! You can't run the shipping lines from a prison cell! If you kill me, the Commission will wipe the Moretti name from Illinois!”
I took one step forward.
My right foot hit the stone with the heavy, unhurried cadence of a foundry hammer.
Then my left.
I didn't reach for the revolver. I walked to the walnut display case, picked up the green cashmere scarf Bianca had left draped over her oil easel six years ago, and wrapped the soft wool around my knuckles.
I reached down, caught Julian by the collar of his eight-thousand-dollar cashmere coat, and hauled his two-hundred-pound frame off the floor with one arm, slamming his spine against the fluted limestone pillar beneath Bianca’s portrait.
“The Commission didn't ratify a succession, Julian,” I murmured, my face inches from his sweating nose. “They ratified an execution.”
The gallery doors burst inward with a concussive bang.
Four armed security guards—men hired by Julian’s private security firm, carrying tactical carbines—rushed into the room, their boots sliding on the fallen plaster dust.
“Drop him!” the lead contractor shouted, bringing the muzzle up toward my chest. “Hands off Mr. Vance!”
Before the contractor could clear his safety, a dry, aged cough came from the arched entrance behind them.
Old Matteo stepped through the threshold.
The seventy-year-old groundskeeper was wearing his dirt-stained denim overalls, holding a double-barreled ten-gauge goose gun with the twin hammers pulled fully back.
Behind him stood eight union longshoremen from the River West docks—men with calloused hands, heavy wool watch caps, and iron pry-bars tucked into their belts. Men who had served my father when Julian Vance was still writing tax briefs in an air-conditioned downtown office.
“Lower the barrels, boys,” Matteo said in his gravelly, broken accent, the twin bores of the ten-gauge pointed dead at the lead contractor’s throat. “The Don is on his feet.”
The four private security contractors took one look at my standing frame, one look at the eight longshoremen filling the hallway, and let their carbines drop to the floor with four heavy metallic thuds.
They backed away into the corridor with their hands raised.
I turned my head toward Matteo.
“Take the child to the kitchen, Matteo,” I ordered softly. “Have Mrs. Gable make her hot cocoa. With marshmallows.”
Clara didn't move immediately. She walked to the base of the pillar, looked down at Julian Vance with those ancient, dark eyes that had seen through twenty-two years of high-society lies, and whispered:
“The lady in the green scarf said your boots were going to get very muddy today, Lorenzo.”
Then she took her grandfather’s weathered hand and walked out into the corridor.
May you like
I looked back at Julian.
“Now, Julian,” I whispered, tightening the cashmere wrap around his throat until his heels cleared the floorboards. “Tell me where the rest of my sister's bones are buried before I feed you through the Goose Island shredder.”
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