Chapter 4 - The Circle of Wolves
By two in the morning, the mansion’s ground-floor library had been turned into an interrogation room.
Heavy storm shutters were sealed over every French door, and two armed guards stood outside in the corridor with assault rifles hung across their tactical vests. Inside the room, the air was thick with the scent of wet wool, burning tobacco, and palpable terror.
Four men sat around the antique mahogany conference table.
There was Uncle Silvio, eighty years old, leaning heavily on his gold-topped cane, his rheumy eyes darting suspiciously across the room. Next to him sat Julian Vance, Dante’s cousin and the head of the family’s logistical network along the New Jersey docks. Across the table were Paulie “The Hook” Rossi, who ran the waterfront warehouses, and Marco, standing at Dante’s right hand like an iron sentinel.
I stood on the mezzanine landing above the library, hidden behind the carved balustrade where Dante had ordered me to remain with Bruno. Sophie was asleep in Dante’s secure bedroom under the watchful eye of an armed nurse, but I couldn't stay away. I needed to see the face of the man who had terrified my daughter for six nights.
Dante didn't sit. He paced slowly around the perimeter of the table, his footsteps rhythmic and deliberate against the parquet flooring.
“Six nights,” Dante said quietly, his voice carrying effortlessly into every corner of the high-ceilinged room. “A rat has been moving through the lower foundations of this house. Six nights, someone has been tapping on the glass of a five-year-old girl’s room.”
Julian cleared his throat, adjusting his tailored silk tie. “Dante, with all respect, why are we here in the middle of a storm because of a servant’s child? If there’s a prowler on the grounds, Marco’s boys can sweep the woods and bury him in the marsh. Why wake the entire council?”
Dante stopped directly behind Julian’s chair.
Without warning, Dante reached down, seized the back of Julian’s collar, and slammed the man’s face down onto the mahogany tabletop with bone-rattling force.
Julian gasped, blood immediately welling from his nose onto the polished wood. Silvio didn't flinch; he simply shifted his grip on his cane.
“She isn't a servant's child,” Dante hissed into Julian’s ear, his hand tightening on the collar until the silk threads groaned. “Her father was Miguel Vance. A man who died three years ago trying to prevent a shipment of unregistered assault rifles from being used to blow my father’s motorcade into the East River.”
A heavy, suffocating silence dropped over the table.
Julian groaned, his cheek pressed flat against the wood. “Dante... I don't know anything about that... Miguel was a clerk, I swear to God—”
“The radio found in the marsh was cloned from my private band,” Dante continued, ignoring his cousin’s pleas. “Marco checked the registry logs twenty minutes ago. The digital hand-off occurred through a terminal in the Newark freight office. Your office, Julian.”
“No!” Julian choked out, spit and blood flecking his lips. “Someone hacked my terminal! You know how many guys have access to that hub! Paulie was there on Tuesday! Ask Paulie!”
Paulie Rossi leaned forward, his weathered face dark with offense. “Don't throw your garbage in my yard, Julian. I was in Atlantic City on Tuesday. Marco can check the toll records.”
Up on the mezzanine, Bruno’s ears suddenly flattened.
The dog didn't growl at Julian. He didn't look at Paulie. His gaze was fixed entirely on Uncle Silvio.
I leaned closer to the balustrade, peering through the shadows. Silvio sat completely motionless, his hands folded over his cane. But as the argument escalated below, the old man reached into his breast pocket with his right hand, pulling out a tin of mints.
As he opened the tin, the light from the chandelier caught a flash of metal beneath his jacket cuff.
A brass signet ring with an embossed anchor.
My breath caught in my throat. My mind flashed back three years to the rainy afternoon in Greenpoint when two men in trench coats had visited our apartment building two days before Miguel was killed. One of them had stayed downstairs in a car, but through the mail slot, I had seen a weathered hand resting on the banister, tapping impatiently.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*
And on the third finger of that hand: a heavy brass anchor ring.
“Dante,” I called out from the mezzanine, my voice slicing through the shouting below.
Every man at the table froze, their heads snapping upward toward the shadows of the upper gallery. Marco reached for his holster instinctively before recognizing me.
Dante let go of Julian’s neck, his dark eyes looking up into the gloom. “Elena, I told you to stay in the suite.”
I stepped forward into the light of the chandelier, my hands gripping the railing. “It’s the ring.”
Silvio’s head turned slowly, his eyes narrowing into cold slits.
May you like
“The man who came to my apartment three days before Miguel died,” I said, pointing down directly at Dante’s uncle. “He tapped his knuckles on the mail slot three times. He wore that ring.”
***
