Chapter 6 - The UltimatumThe silence that fell over the grand hall was absolute.
Viktor Vance stared at the detonator in his hand, then at Clara, then at Damiano. He realized the terrifying truth: there was no escape. The Verrone estate was a fortress wrapped around a slaughterhouse, and they had walked right into the jaws of the beast.
"Drop it, Viktor," Damiano commanded, stepping within arm's reach of the mercenary.
"Go to hell, Verrone," Viktor spat, his thumb pressing down on the trigger switch.
He never felt the impact.
With blinding speed, Damiano seized Viktor’s wrist, twisting it with a sickening crunch of bone and cartilage. The detonator slipped from paralyzed fingers, clattering harmlessly onto the marble floor. Before Viktor could scream, Damiano’s fist connected with his jaw, sending the ex-CIA operative flying backward through a stained-glass window into the cold Manhattan night.
The remaining mercenaries threw down their weapons, raising their hands in surrender. Rafael and his men swarmed them, zip-tying their wrists with ruthless efficiency.
Damiano turned slowly to face the remaining mafia dons. Don Silvio Marchetti sat heavily on an overturned velvet chair, looking twenty years older than he had ten minutes ago. Don Emilio was still sobbing on the floor.
"You wanted my empire, Silvio," Damiano said quietly, walking over and picking up Silvio’s dropped ivory-handled cane. He turned it over in his hands before snapping it cleanly in half across his knee. "You wanted the docks, the real estate, the political clout."
"Kill me, then," Silvio whispered, staring at the floor. "Go ahead. Let the commission tear your city apart in revenge."
"Kill you?" Damiano chuckled, a dark, humorless sound. "No, Silvio. Death is too easy. It’s what you deserve, but it’s not what I'm going to give you."
Damiano tossed the broken cane onto Silvio’s lap.
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"Tomorrow morning, every federal prosecutor in the Eastern District will receive an encrypted flash drive containing thirty years of your bank records, wire transfers, and hit orders courtesy of Chloe downstairs," Damiano said. "You’ll spend the rest of your natural life in a maximum-security federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. No visitors. No lawyers. Just concrete and silence."
He turned his piercing gaze toward Emilio Castri. "And as for you, Emilio—your sons will take over what's left of your territory. But you will sign over fifty percent of your shipping ports to the Verrone Foundation by sunrise. Consider it a tax for trespassing."
