Chapter 5 - The Reckoning in the Rain
The fight was short, brutal, and entirely one-sided.
Vincent was younger by five years, but he had spent his life behind a desk and in upscale restaurants, while I had spent mine in the trenches of the New York underworld. When I drove my fist into his solar plexus, the breath left his lungs in a sharp, wet gasp.
He staggered back, slamming against the mahogany coat rack, sending Isabelle’s old winter scarves tumbling down like fallen leaves.
He pulled a snub-nosed revolver from his belt, but I kicked the weapon upward before he could clear the leather. The bullet punched a hole through the plaster ceiling, raining white dust down over our shoulders.
I grabbed him by the lapels of his expensive wool coat, hauled him off his feet, and threw him through the open front doors into the pouring rain.
He hit the wet gravel hard, groaning as the mud soaked through his suit.
I stepped out onto the portico, looking down at him as the lightning split the sky over Long Island.
"You thought you won," I said, my voice cutting through the roar of the storm. "You thought you could kill my wife, terrorize my children into silence, and take my empire piece by piece."
Vincent spat blood onto the stones, laughing weakly. "You think the police are going to touch me? I have judges in Manhattan on retainer, Dom. Half the city council owes me favors you don't even know about."
"I'm not calling the police," I said.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and tapped speakerphone.
"Are you recording this?" I asked into the device.
A voice came through the static, crisp and cold.
"Every word, Mr. Romano," said Agent Miller of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Organized Crime Task Force. "We’ve got the wiretap authorization secured twenty minutes ago based on the financial files Ms. Bennett forwarded to our cyber division."
Vincent’s face went chalk white.
"You... you worked with the feds?" he choked out.
May you like
"No," I said, looking down at my cousin with utter contempt. "Grace did. Turns out she wasn't just a housekeeper. She’s an elite financial investigator seconded to the federal task force to bring down your entire operation from the inside."
Three unmarked black SUVs tore through the open iron gates, their sirens silent but their high-beams blinding in the rain. Federal agents poured from the vehicles, weapons drawn, surrounding Vincent before he could push himself out of the mud.
