Chapter 6 - A Debt in Blood
Richard began backing away toward the landing gear of the jet, his designer shoes splashing into puddles. "Alexander! Listen to me! It isn't what you think! Julian was planning to betray the family! He was going to sell us out to the Department of Justice!"
I stopped four feet from him. Rain dripped from my hair, running down the bridge of my nose, but I didn't blink.
"Julian didn't have a treasonous bone in his body, Richard," I said, my voice barely louder than a whisper, yet carrying effortlessly over the hum of the idling jet engines. "You killed him because he wouldn't let you launder cartel money through our docks. You killed him because he had a daughter who carried more honor in her little finger than you've had in your entire miserable life."
Richard’s face drained of what little color remained. "His daughter? That... that cleaning lady's kid?"
"Her name is Sophie Carter," I replied, pulling Julian's handwritten letter from my inner coat pocket and holding it up in the harsh glare of the headlights. "She opened the vault. She brought me his words. And she signed your death warrant with her thumb."
Richard dropped the aluminum cases. He fell to his knees in the mud and rainwater, grabbing the hem of my trousers. "Alexander, please! We grew up together! Our fathers built this city together! Take the money! Take the Swiss accounts, take the European shipping routes—I’ll disappear to South America, you'll never see me again!"
I looked down at him, feeling no rage, no satisfaction—only an empty, hollow sorrow for the eight years Julian had spent beneath a marble headstone while this coward enjoyed penthouses and vintage wine.
"Julian asked for twenty-four hours to get his wife and daughter out of the city," I said softly. "You gave him a cut brake line on a rainy bridge."
I signaled to Dante.
Dante stepped forward, grabbing Richard by the collar of his suit and hauling him to his feet like an empty sack of potatoes.
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"The Hudson River is very cold tonight, Richard," I said, turning my back on him and walking toward my SUV. "Make sure he remembers how it feels to drown in the dark."
Richard’s screams of terror were swallowed by the roar of the rain and the slam of my car door.
