Chapter 8 - The Price of Blood
The hall was tomb-quiet. The capos waited, watching their Don, expecting the brutal execution that had defined the Five Boroughs for a quarter of a century. In the old days, Marcus would have been dragged down to the basement meat lockers, his screams muffled by thick concrete walls, his body fed to the industrial incinerator in Queens.
I stared down at the man who had stolen my son. Every instinct in my veins screamed for blood. My fingers twitched over the grip of the Kimber .45 in my waistband. A single bullet between his eyes would end the three-year nightmare. It would be easy. It would satisfy the dark god of vengeance that had ruled my life.
Then, in the silence of my mind, I heard a small voice whispering in a peeling kitchen: Don't cry, Grandpa.
I saw Caleb's eyes in Maya's face. I remembered what my son had said in that recording: He wanted me to grow up in the sunlight.
If I executed Marcus here, in cold blood, the cycle would never stop. The blood would splash onto Maya's life just as it had drowned Caleb's. The empire would demand another Don, another war, another generation of orphans hiding in rotting houses.
I stepped back.
"No," I said, my voice echoing through the rafters.
The capos exchanged confused, startled glances.
"Vincent?" Sal asked, his hand hovering over his own weapon. "What do we do with him?"
"Strip him," I commanded. "Take his money, his cars, his properties, and his name. Hand every single ledger, every audio file, and every bank account on that table to the Federal Prosecutor's office tonight."
Marcus’s jaw dropped. "Federal prosecutors? You’re turning us over to the feds?! You’re breaking the omertà!"
"I am not turning us over, Marcus," I said coldly. "The files contain only your crimes, your illegal cartels, and your personal murder contracts. The federal government has spent ten years trying to put someone away for the Route 9 corridor killings. You will spend the rest of your natural life in a maximum-security federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. In solitary confinement. Twenty-three hours a day in a concrete box, with nobody to talk to, nobody to command, and nothing to look at but the four walls of your own guilt."
I leaned down close to his ear, letting him feel the freezing breath of my resolve. "A bullet is an escape, Marcus. You don't deserve the peace of death. You will live a very, very long time. And every single Sunday, while you sit in that cage, you will remember that Caleb's daughter is out in the sun, laughing."
May you like
I nodded to the capos. "Take him out of my sight."
They dragged Marcus out of the hall, his hysterical screams fading down the stone corridor until the heavy steel doors slammed shut, cutting him off from the world forever.
