Chapter 2 - The Audit of Blood
The private office on the penthouse floor of The Gilded Vulture smelled of old scotch, expensive cigars, and imminent violence. Two massive brute-force security guards—men Dominic thought he had bought off with double salaries—stood silently by the reinforced steel door, their eyes fixed respectfully on Rocco.
Dominic was slumped in a leather armchair, a thin sheen of sweat slicking his forehead. Maeve sat opposite him, pouring a glass of 30-year-old single malt with the practiced ease of someone who had poured a thousand drinks before.
"Let's talk numbers, Dominic," Rocco said, leaning against the edge of his massive mahogany desk. He wasn't using a cane. His legs held him with absolute, terrifying stability. "Starting with the thirty million missing from the European ledger."
"That was an investment!" Dominic snapped, his voice shrill. "The cryptocurrency exchange—"
"Went under because you bought into a Ponzi scheme run by a guy named Skip whom you met at a yacht club," Rocco finished smoothly. He tossed a thick manila folder onto Dominic’s lap. The pages fluttered open to reveal bank statements, wire transfers, and signed confessions from Dominic’s own private secretary. "Skip is currently tied to a chair in a warehouse in Queens, singing like a canary about every offshore account you thought you clever enough to hide."
Dominic stared at the papers, his blood running cold. Every escape route, every fake identity, every offshore shell company was laid out in red ink.
"You planned this," Dominic whispered, his eyes widening with horror as the pieces clicked together. "The paralysis... the weakness... you faked the whole thing to watch me hang myself."
"I didn't fake the poison, nephew," Rocco said quietly, tapping a finger against his chest. "I just adjusted my diet to neutralize your little gifts. I wanted to see who would run to my side when the empire looked like it was crumbling, and who would start picking the bones clean before the body was even cold."
He glanced sideways at Maeve, who took a slow sip of her scotch.
"Maeve figured it out inside of three minutes," Rocco continued. "She noticed the tremors in my left hand weren't neurological—they were theatrical. She saw the way your security guards looked at you—not with loyalty, but with the hollow terror of men working for a dead man walking."
Dominic leaped to his feet, lunging blindly toward the desk with a heavy crystal decanter raised like a weapon. "I’ll kill you both! I’ll burn this whole empire to ash before I let you—"
He didn't even make it halfway.
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The two security guards moved with terrifying speed. One caught Dominic’s wrist mid-swing, snapping it downward with a sickening crunch. The other swept his legs out from under him, sending Dominic crashing hard into the imported Persian rug.
"Amateur," Rocco muttered, not even flinching as Dominic groaned in agony on the floor. "Lock him in the vault downstairs. Let him think about asset allocation for the next forty years."
