Chapter 4 - The Sound of Metal
The smoke from the dead men’s gear hung thick in the air until Ezra manually forced the emergency hydraulic blast doors open, letting the frigid night air scour the underground vault. Within twenty minutes, Julian Vane and four heavily armed enforcers had cleared the bodies, dragging them away into the darkness without a word.
Ezra sat on an overturned crate, his knuckles bleeding where a piece of flying glass had grazed him, his white shirt stained with soot and soot-slicked sweat. Fen Odo was kneeling on the concrete before him, weeping uncontrollably.
""I didn't let them in, Mr. Calhoun! I swear on my mother’s grave, I didn't know they were on the docks!"" Fen sobbed, his hands clasped together in desperate supplication. ""The security cameras were cut from the substation down the street! I was in the inventory office!""
Ren stood by the cooling kiln, her arms crossed over her chest, watching with cold detachment. She knew Fen was lying. She could hear it in the pitch of his voice, the shallow, frantic rhythm of his breathing that mimicked a man caught with an open valve.
""Search his locker,"" Ren said quietly.
Fen’s head snapped toward her, his tear-streaked face twisting in sudden, ugly fury. ""Shut your mouth, you fat peasant! You're a hired hand! You don't speak to the boss about company business—""
Before Fen could finish the sentence, Ezra’s boot took him in the sternum. The impact sent the floor manager skidding three feet across the slick concrete, coughing and gasping for air.
""Julian,"" Ezra said without looking back. ""Open his locker. Tear the floorboards out of his office if you have to.""
Julian vanished up the stairs. Five minutes later, he returned carrying a heavy leather briefcase and a small, stamped velvet pouch. He laid them on the marver table before Ezra. Ezra flipped the briefcase open with the tip of his knife. Inside were stacks of hundred-dollar bills bound with purple paper bands—the signature mark of the Castiglione family, Calhoun’s chief rivals on the southern piers. But it was the velvet pouch that made Ren step closer.
Ezra emptied the pouch onto the steel. Six rough, uncut stones tumbled out, clattering like frozen hail. They were cloudy, uncut diamonds, each the size of a walnut.
""The Castigliones don't have the stomach for a war on the waterfront,"" Ezra murmured, rolling one of the raw stones between his scarred thumb and forefinger. ""They wouldn't dare strike at my personal studio unless someone promised them complete immunity. Someone inside my own council.""
He looked up at Fen, whose face had gone completely white, all tears drying into pure, unadulterated terror.
""Who gave you the timing for the furnace?"" Ezra asked, his voice deathly calm, far more terrifying than any shout. ""Who told you when to trip the valve so the blast would take me out while I stood on the catwalk?""
""I... I can't,"" Fen whined, shaking so violently his teeth clicked. ""If I tell you, they’ll skin my sisters. They’ll throw my mother into the harbor.""
""If you don't tell me,"" Ezra whispered, leaning down until his lips were inches from Fen's ear, ""your sisters and your mother will be perfectly safe. But you will spend the next three days discovering how slowly a human lung burns when you introduce molten cullet through a feeding tube.""
Fen shattered. He spilled everything in a frantic, choking torrent of words. ""Dante! Dante Moretti! He set up the pipeline with the Castigliones three months ago! He said you were getting weak, Ezra! He said you spent too much time brooding over your father's ghost while the port lost millions to customs seizures! He’s the one who wanted the glass sculpture! He’s the one who ordered the delivery to the Solstice banquet!""
Dante Moretti. Ezra’s own underboss. The man who had sat at Thomas Calhoun’s funeral twenty years ago and sworn blood loyalty to the Calhoun name.
Ren felt a cold, familiar chill settle in the pit of her stomach. ""Moretti was there,"" she said, her voice cutting through the damp cellar.
Ezra turned to her, his gray eyes piercing. ""Where?""
""Twenty-two years ago. At the Drell Foundry,"" Ren said, her voice steady and hollow. ""My father had an argument with a man in the casting room three days before the blast. The man wore a gold signet ring carved with a black viper. He told my father that if he didn't cast the hollow glass containers for the diamond shipments, the furnace would find a way to eat him alive. My father refused. He was a craftsman, not a smuggler.""
She looked at Ezra, her gaze unflinching. ""Dante Moretti wears that ring. I saw it on his finger yesterday morning when he walked through the yard.""
Ezra stood silent for a long moment, the muscle in his jaw ticking with a slow, deadly cadence. The puzzle pieces of two decades were slamming into place with brutal clarity. The fire that killed his father hadn't been an accident, nor had it been an outside attack. It had been an inside purge, orchestrated by the very man who had helped raise him.
""Julian,"" Ezra ordered softly. ""Take Fen down to the lower cellar. Keep him alive until tomorrow night.""
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""And the woman?"" Julian asked, nodding toward Ren.
Ezra walked over to Ren, stopping inches away. He reached out and gently brushed a smudge of black soot from her cheek, his touch surprisingly tender amidst the carnage of the room. ""The woman stays with me. We have a sculpture to finish.""
