Chapter 13 - The Chessboard Bleeds
The tension in the grand foyer was thick enough to cut with a butcher’s knife. Marco’s hand twitched beneath his coat, his fingers itching for the grip of his weapon as he sized up the young woman standing on the marble staircase.
“Where is Leo?” Vincent demanded, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings. He refused to look intimidated, though a cold knot of unease was beginning to form in his stomach. The girl wasn't shaking. She wasn't begging. She looked at him the way an apex predator looks at a wounded rabbit.
“Leo is busy managing the docks,” Myra replied smoothly, continuing down the final steps until she stood just ten feet away from the Boston patriarch. “Which means you have to deal with me. And trust me, Vincent, I am much less forgiving than he is.”
Marco stepped forward, his massive frame looming over Myra. “Watch your tone, little girl. You’re talking to the head of the Moretti syndicate. We can wipe out your entire operation before the sun sets.”
Before Vincent could issue a command to hold his enforcer back, Myra didn't flinch. She didn't blink. She simply raised her left hand and gave a sharp, two-finger gesture toward the shadows of the upper balcony.
Click. Click. Click.
The unmistakable sound of a dozen assault rifles locking and loading echoed from the upper tier. Red laser dots blossomed across Marco’s chest, painting him like a constellation of targets.
Vincent’s face drained of color. He looked up, realizing too late that the entire second-floor gallery was lined with Casaro snipers, their barrels trained directly on his head.
“You brought two limousines and six men,” Myra said, her voice dropping into a chilling whisper as she closed the distance between them. “My snipers have twenty-four high-caliber rifles trained on your vehicle tires, your engine blocks, and your spines. You are dead men the moment you step outside those doors.”
Vincent swallowed hard, his throat dry as bone. He had miscalculated profoundly. This wasn't a naive civilian playing dress-up in her boyfriend’s clothes. This was a cold, calculating tactician who had anticipated every single move the Boston syndicate was going to make.
“What do you want, Myra?” Vincent growled, his pride fracturing under the weight of sheer survival.
“Two things,” Myra said, her eyes flashing with absolute authority. “First, you sign a formal treaty relinquishing all Boston shipping rights through the New York harbor to the Casaro syndicate. Second, you take Nico off our hands permanently. Send him to a private asylum in Europe, and ensure he never sets foot in America again.”
Vincent stared at her in stunned disbelief. “You’re banishing your own ex-fiancé?”
“He was never my fiancé,” Myra corrected coldly, holding up Nico’s silver signet ring before slipping it into her pocket. “He was a ten-thousand-dollar mistake. And I’m done paying for him.”
Vincent looked at Marco, then back at Myra’s unblinking, lethal gaze. He knew when he was beaten. Slowly, deliberately, he reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a gold-plated fountain pen, and nodded to his enforcer to retrieve the contract from the briefcase.
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“You’re a dangerous woman, Myra Casaro,” Vincent muttered as he signed his name in bold, jagged strokes across the binding legal document.
“Thank you,” Myra replied, snatching the paper away before the ink could even dry. “Safe trip back to Boston, Don Moretti. Don't ever come back.”
