Chapter 12 - The Knock on the Door
Downstairs, the house was filled with the kind of chaotic, beautiful noise that used to feel like a foreign language.
I could hear Grace laughing in the kitchen, arguing good-naturedly with Olivia over whether pancakes should have blueberries or chocolate chips, while Sophie and Nora chased each other around the marble foyer with a pair of squeaking toy puppies.
My cell phone vibrated sharply against the mahogany desktop.
An unknown number. Local Queens prefix.
I slid my thumb across the screen and pressed it to my ear.
“You’re a hard man to keep dead, Dominic,” a gravelly, aged voice rasped through the speaker. It sounded like grinding stones. “The federal government thinks you’re swimming with the striped bass, but old ghosts know better.”
“Who is this?” I asked, my voice dropping into that flat, dead octave that commanded fear in every dark room from Manhattan to Montauk.
“A man who owns the mortgage on your peace of mind,” the voice replied. “Check your front gate, Dominic. You left a package out in the rain.”
The line went dead.
I didn't reach for my phone. My hand moved instinctively to the holster strapped beneath my left arm, sliding my custom Sig Sauer free with a soft, practiced hiss of leather.
I stepped out of the study, walking silently down the curved marble staircase.
Grace looked up from the kitchen island, a spatula in her hand, her eyes catching mine instantly. She knew that look. It was the face of the wolf who smelled smoke in the wind.
“Dominic?” she asked quietly, lowering the spatula. “What is it?”
“Take the girls to the panic room behind the pantry,” I said, my voice dangerously calm. “Lock the inner steel bulkhead. Don't come out until I give you the code.”
“Not a chance,” Grace said, setting the spatula down and stepping around the counter. She pulled her Glock from the small of her back with a fluid, professional motion. “We’re past the part where you play the lone hero, Romano. What’s at the gate?”
Before I could answer, a dull, heavy thud echoed from the front entryway.
Someone had just dropped something massive against our heavy oak front doors.
I motioned for Grace to stay back, keeping my weapon raised as I crossed the grand foyer. The morning sunlight filtered through the stained-glass transom above the double doors, casting long, fractured shadows across the floor where my daughters had been laughing just moments before.
I reached out, unlocked the deadbolts with a sharp click, and pulled the door open.
There was no delivery truck. No courier.
Just a heavy, blood-soaked canvas duffel bag resting on the stone porch, with a single silver coin—the crest of the Moretti Syndicate—resting on top of the zipper.
Slowly, I knelt down, pushed the silver coin aside, and unzipped the bag.
Inside wasn't money or contraband.
It was Vince.
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My loyal, unyielding head of security, who had watched my back through a decade of turf wars, sat bound inside the bag, his chest marked with a brand burned deep into his flesh: The Covenant Lives.
And pinned to his collar was a digital timer counting down from sixty minutes.
