Chapter 19 - The Final Verdict"It's over, Salvatore," I whispered, my voice echoing off the cavernous metal walls. "Your era ended ten years ago. You just refused to accept the burial."
Salvatore stared up at me, blood trickling from a cut above his eyebrow, his chest heaving with rage and humiliation. "You think you've won, Dante? The syndicate is a hydra. You can't kill an idea written in blood."
"I'm not killing an idea," I said coldly, disabling the safety on my pistol. "I'm cutting off the head."
Before I could pull the trigger, the wailing sirens of a dozen NYPD and federal task force vehicles suddenly echoed outside the warehouse, their flashing red and blue lights painting the corrugated metal walls in violent, shifting colors.
Marcus stepped up beside me, his rifle lowered. "Boss, federal marshals. We have sixty seconds before they breach the perimeter."
I looked down at my uncle one last time. I didn't pull the trigger. Death was too easy for a man like Salvatore; rotting in a maximum-security federal supermax prison for the rest of his natural life was a far more fitting end for a ghost who refused to stay buried.
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"Take him away," I instructed Marcus and the loyalists. "Hand him over to the feds with the complete ledger of his offshore accounts. Let the legal system finish what we started."
As Marcus hauled a screaming, cursing Salvatore to his feet, I turned and walked out of the warehouse into the cool night air.
