Chapter 5 - Blood on the North End CobblestonesThe private courtyard of Don Salvatore’s North End palazzo was usually filled with the sound of clinking crystal glasses and Italian opera. Tonight, it echoed with the dull, rhythmic thud of combat boots and the metallic click of slide-locks.
Salvatore sat at his mahogany desk, swirling a glass of 30-year-old scotch, when the heavy oak doors splintered inward.
He didn't even have time to reach for the gold-plated Beretta in his drawer before Dante Russo was standing over him, pressing the cold steel barrel of a custom-engraved 1911 right between Salvatore’s aging eyes.
"Evening, Don Salvatore," Dante whispered.
Salvatore swallowed hard, his face pale as chalk. "Dante... you're supposed to be at the docks. We had an arrangement—"
"You had an arrangement with a ghost," Dante cut him off, pressing the barrel harder until Salvatore leaned back against his leather chair. "Seven years ago, you tried to burn my wife alive. You forced her into hiding. You made my daughters grow up in a freezing hellhole."
"I... I don't know what you're talking about—"
May you like
"Liar," Dante hissed. He didn't pull the trigger. Not yet. Death was too quick for a man like Salvatore. Instead, Dante reached out, grabbed Salvatore by his silk tie, and dragged him across the desk, smashing a crystal decanter into shards across the floor.
"You're going to sign over every port, every warehouse, and every penny of your offshore accounts to a trust fund bearing my daughters' names," Dante said smoothly, his voice dropping into a chilling register. "And then, Salvatore, I'm going to let you live—so you can spend the rest of your days wondering every single second when I decide to come back and finish what I started."
