Chapter 3 - The Traitor’s Ledger
Aleandro didn’t drop the gun. Instead, a cold, lethal smile touched the corners of his mouth—the terrifying smile that had made men throw themselves into the East River rather than face his wrath.
"Marcus," Aleandro murmured, his voice deadly calm. "I pay you four hundred thousand dollars a year. You have a penthouse in Manhattan, a villa in Amalfi, and immunity from every federal agency in the Tri-State area. And you sold out to a dead man's daughter?"
Marcus didn't blink. "Don Salvatore offered me something money can't buy, Aleandro. Complete autonomy when the Moretti empire is carved up. You grew soft. You started caring about legitimacy. A Don doesn't wear a three-piece suit to sit in a boardroom; he rules from the shadows."
"And Isabella?" Aleandro glanced at the woman who had shared his bed, his secrets, and his quietest moments. "Was she part of your reward package too?"
Isabella’s expression hardened, though a flicker of genuine anguish crossed her features. "I was never yours, Aleandro. Every night I lay beside you, I imagined wrapping my hands around your throat the same way your father did to my family. The bug in the clock was just the beginning. Tonight, the entire network goes dark. By midnight, your accounts will be frozen, your ships seized by the Coast Guard, and you will be lying at the bottom of the Atlantic."
She stepped back, signaling to Marcus. "Kill him. Make it look like an internal coup."
Marcus raised his Glock higher, his finger tightening on the trigger.
BANG.
The sound of gunfire tore through the glass conservatory—but it didn't come from Marcus's gun.
With a shattering crash, the glass skylight above them exploded inward. Heavy tactical cables dropped from the rainy night sky like descending spiders. Before Marcus or his men could react, flashbang grenades cascaded down into the center of the greenhouse, blinding white light and deafening concussive force obliterating the room's acoustics.
Aleandro dropped to the floor, rolling behind the thick stone base of the fountain as automatic gunfire chewed up the orchids and shattered the ceramic pots.
Through the smoke and strobe lights, tactical boots hit the flagstones. Men wearing unmarked black tactical gear—not Moretti guards, and certainly not police—swarmed the conservatory with military precision.
Marcus shouted orders, trying to rally the Romano hitmen, but a burst of suppressed fire from the shadows caught him square in the shoulder, spinning him into a rack of ferns.
May you like
Aleandro rose through the smoke, wiping dirt from his lapel, his Sig Sauer still leveled. He looked toward the entrance of the greenhouse.
Stepping through the shattered doors, flanked by four armed operatives, was a man everyone in Brooklyn thought was dead.
