Chapter 4 - The Ledger of Blood
The study was deathly quiet once more, save for the muffled, wet groans of Santino Russo as he lay sprawled across the shattered remains of the mahogany desk, blood pouring freely from his broken nose and soaking into the expensive European tailoring of his shirt.
Lorenzo stood over him, expressionless, casually spinning the Beretta around his trigger finger before bringing it back down to point directly between Santino’s tear-filled eyes.
“Get up,” Lorenzo commanded quietly.
Santino whimpered, clutching his bleeding face with trembling hands, slowly dragging himself off the desk and sliding down onto his knees on the Persian rug. He looked up at Lorenzo like a beaten dog staring down an executioner.
“Lorenzo... please,” Santino choked out, blood bubbling from his lips. “We grew up together on the West Side. We bled in the gutters together. Don't do this. Take everything—take the houses, the accounts, the ships, the territory! Take it all! Just... let me live.”
Lorenzo didn't blink. He reached out with his left hand, picked up a single sheet of paper from the scattered legal documents on the floor, and glanced at it. It was the digital transfer authorization form—the one scheduled to execute tomorrow morning, transferring his entire domestic portfolio into a Cayman Islands holding company controlled by the Calabrese family.
“You talk about the West Side, Santino,” Lorenzo said, his voice chillingly level. “You talk about bleeding in the gutters. Do you remember what my father told us the night we were inducted into the family? He put a burning card in our hands and told us that betrayal doesn't just cost you your life—it costs your soul.”
He dropped the burning-hot paper onto the rug beside Santino’s knee.
“You didn't just try to steal my money, Santino,” Lorenzo continued, stepping closer, his shadow swallowing the kneeling man whole. “You tried to turn my home into a tomb. You conspired with the men who slaughtered my cousin in Brooklyn three years ago. And worse than that... you made my wife an accomplice to her own irrelevance.”
Camila let out a sharp, choked sob from the corner of the room. She looked up, her makeup smeared with tears, her voice cracking as she crawled a few inches across the floor toward Lorenzo’s boots.
“Lorenzo... please,” she whispered, clutching at the hem of his overcoat. “Send me away. Divorce me. Strip me of everything. Put me on a plane to Europe with nothing. I’ll never come back. I swear to God I’ll never speak your name again. Just don't let him kill me.”
Lorenzo looked down at her. His face remained as hard and cold as carved marble. He didn't pull his coat away, nor did he offer her a hand.
“Divorce is for people who fall out of love, Camila,” Lorenzo said softly. “What we had wasn't a marriage. It was a business arrangement. And when an asset commits treason, you don't file paperwork. You write it off.”
He stepped back, freeing his coat from her desperate grip, and walked over to the heavy mahogany door where the deadbolt had been blown off its frame. He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out his phone, and dialed a three-digit speed-dial number.
It picked up on the first ring.
“Boss,” a gruff, gravelly voice answered on the other end.
“Marco,” Lorenzo said, his voice dripping with venom.
On the other end of the line, there was a fraction of a second hesitation—a tiny, imperceptible hitch in the breathing of his head of security.
“Boss... I thought you were still in New York,” Marco said, trying desperately to keep his voice steady, though the panic underneath was palpable. “The gate guards said—they didn't report—”
“The gate guards are currently tied up in the gardener’s shed with broken ribs,” Lorenzo interrupted smoothly, pacing slowly across the study floor. “And you, Marco... you’re going to pack a very light bag tonight. You’re going to drive out to the O’Hare cargo terminal, board the midnight freighter to Bogotá, and never, ever set foot in the United States again. Because if I see your face in Chicago when the sun comes up tomorrow, I won't just kill you. I’ll make sure your children spend the rest of their lives paying off your debts.”
There was a long, suffocating silence on the phone line.
“...Understood, Boss,” Marco whispered, his voice trembling before the line went dead with a sharp click.
Lorenzo slipped the phone back into his pocket. He turned around to face the two broken traitors kneeling in the center of his ruined study.
May you like
The door behind him creaked open.
Step by heavy step, the three men he had summoned via Sophie’s burner phone—hardened enforcers from the Cicero safehouse, wearing black tactical gear and carrying suppressed submachine guns—walked silently into the room, their eyes fixed on Lorenzo, waiting for the final word.
