Chapter 8 - The Price of Silence
Jimmy crashed backward onto the linoleum floor of the small galley, scrambling frantically toward a stainless-steel counter where a short-barreled revolver lay beside a half-empty bottle of rum.
Carmine stepped through the door behind me and caught Jimmy’s leg with a heavy boot, twisting his ankle until Jimmy screamed and rolled onto his back.
I walked over, picked up the revolver from the counter, unloaded the cylinder, and tossed the bullets out the open porthole into the green water of the marina.
“Dominic,” Jimmy gasped, his hands raised in front of his face, trembling violently. “Dominic, man, listen to me! I didn't know it was your wife! I swear to God! Pauly told me it was a woman who was blackmailing him! He gave me the car description and the location!”
I sat down on the small vinyl bench across from him, resting my hands on my knees.
“You shot her in front of three children, Jimmy,” I said softly.
“I didn't see the kids!” Jimmy wept, tears running through the stubble on his cheeks. “The rear windows were pitch black! I just walked up, fired three rounds through the driver’s glass, and ran to the getaway car! Pauly was supposed to clean up the scene!”
“Pauly is sitting in the dark beneath my house,” I told him. “He’s been there for eighteen hours.”
Jimmy’s face went gray. The small amount of courage he had left evaporated completely. “What… what are you gonna do to me?”
I looked around the small, cramped cabin. It was cluttered with cheap beer cans, microwave meal wrappers, and dirty clothes—the pathetic, miserable life a man had bought for himself by taking the mother of three little girls.
“I’m not going to kill you in this boat, Jimmy,” I said, standing up. “That would be too clean. You’re coming back to New York with me. You’re going to sit in a courtroom, and you’re going to look a prosecutor in the eye and tell them every single detail of how Pauly Romano paid you fifty thousand dollars to murder Isabelle.”
Jimmy blinked, stunned. “You’re… you’re handing me to the feds?”
“The feds, the state police, whoever wants you,” I replied. “Because my daughters deserve to know that the legal system put their mother’s killer behind bars forever. But first, you’re going to make a pit stop at my estate so Pauly can hear your voice one last time before I hand him over to the same police.”
Carmine pulled Jimmy up by his elbows, hauling him toward the gangway.
For twenty years, my answer to every problem had been a shallow grave in the Pine Barrens or a weight attached to an iron chain in the East River. That was the law of the Romano family. That was how my father had run New York.
May you like
But my daughters weren't growing up in my father’s world anymore. They were growing up in a world where their father didn't hide behind shadows and bodies.
They deserved a clean slate. And I was going to give it to them, piece by piece.
