Chapter 11 - The Seeds of Retaliation
The heavy oak doors of the Westchester estate study closed with a definitive, bone-chilling thud, sealing away the lifeless body of Marcus Vance. Marco stood by the hidden bookshelf passageway, his breathing still slightly elevated from the physical struggle, his eyes fixed on the man who had been our chief of security for a decade and a half.
"What do we do with him, boss?" Marco asked, nodding down at the traitor sprawled motionless across the Persian rug. "Do we feed him to the river, or let the commission handle the execution?"
I walked slowly back around the massive mahogany desk, my fingers brushing against the damp fabric of Miss Rose resting quietly on the wood. The single button eye seemed to stare past the blood and shadows, reflecting a strange, unyielding calm.
"The commission doesn't need to know," I said, my voice cutting through the silent room like a razor. "A public execution of a chief of security invites panic among the lower capos. It signals weakness. It tells every ambitious lieutenant in New York that the house of Moretti has internal fractures."
Marco’s brow furrowed slightly. "Then how do we clean the slate?"
"We treat him like a ghost," I replied coldly. "Erase his digital footprint from the main databases. Empty his bank accounts into the estate's orphan fund. Scrub his name from every ledger, payroll, and personnel record from here to Montreal. As far as the underworld is concerned, Marcus Vance never existed. He simply vanished into the night."
"And his syndicate contacts?"
"They’ll find out soon enough when their wire transfers bounce and their encrypted messages vanish into a dead loop," I answered, sitting back down in my leather chair. "By the time they realize Marcus is gone, they won't know whether he ran, flipped, or was liquidated by his own masters. Paranoia is a much more effective weapon than a bullet."
May you like
Marco nodded once, a grim acknowledgment of the ruthless logic that kept our empire standing. He signaled two enforcers waiting outside the hidden partition, and within moments, the study was clear, leaving behind only the faint scent of cordite and the ghostly quiet of dawn breaking over the lawn.
Upstairs, the estate was slowly waking up to a world free of invisible threats. For the first time in twenty years, the cameras weren't watching for an assassin hiding in the ventilation, and the guards at the gates weren't bracing for an internal betrayal.
