Chapter 8 - The Price of Arrogance
The duplex penthouse at 142 Franklin Street was in total disarray.
Open Louis Vuitton trunks were scattered across the herringbone oak floors of the primary bedroom. Designer dresses, fur coats, diamond necklaces, and stacks of euro notes were being frantically stuffed into luggage by Vivien Croft.
She was wearing a black cashmere travel suit, her blond hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, sweat glistening on her forehead as she barked orders into a burner phone clutched between her ear and shoulder.
“I don’t care what the pilot says!” Vivien screamed into the phone. “Tell him the Gulfstream needs to be on the tarmac at Teterboro by midnight! We are clearing customs through Bermuda before the federal asset freeze hits the FAA registries! Julian is already in Panama!”
She tossed the burner phone onto the king-sized bed, turned toward the walk-in closet to grab her jewelry safe, and froze.
Standing in the center of her bedroom, having bypassed the building’s private keyed elevator and three reinforced deadbolts without making a sound, were five men.
Four of them were massive enforcers dressed in dark tactical overcoats, their faces shadowed, gloved hands resting casually on the grips of suppressed automatic sidearms holstered beneath their shoulders.
And standing in the center, his hands resting on the silver head of his walking cane, was Dante Moretti.
Vivien let out a choked, terrified scream, stumbling backward until her shoulders hit the mirrored doors of her closet.
“How... how did you get in here?” she gasped, her manicured fingers clawing at the wall behind her. “This is a private residence! Get out or I’ll call the police!”
“Call them,” Dante said smoothly.
He took two slow, measured steps into the room. The sheer physical presence of the man seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the space.
One of the enforcers—a hulking man named Salvatore—stepped forward, laid a heavy Pelican hard-case onto the bed, popped the latches, and began methodically dismantling Vivien’s encrypted home server tower, pulling the drives with practiced, surgical speed.
“You’re trespassing!” Vivien shrieked, her voice rising into an hysterical, bird-like screech. “You can’t touch those drives! Those are private commercial files!”
“Those are the files containing Ara Kensington’s stolen medical records,” Dante said, his voice flat, devoid of any human warmth. “Along with the wire transaction logs proving that you and your brother laundered four point two million dollars through Croft Global Consulting.”
Vivien’s face drained of every drop of color. She looked at Dante, her chest heaving, the arrogant, untouchable socialite finally realizing that she had stepped into a game where the rules were written in blood.
“I... I was bluffing!” Vivien stammered, raising her trembling hands in front of her. “I wasn't really going to leak Ara’s records to the press! I just needed leverage! Vance ruined me! He promised me fifty million dollars! He promised me the world, and he left me with nothing!”
“You chose to hunt a child, Vivien,” Dante said softly. He tilted his head, his slate-gray eyes boring into her soul with the terrifying weight of an executioner. “In my world, there are very few rules. But one of them is absolute: you do not touch the children.”
Dante gestured toward Salvatore.
Salvatore pulled a thick, red folder from his coat and dropped it onto the open trunk at Vivien’s feet.
“What is that?” Vivien whispered, her knees shaking so violently she could barely stay upright.
“That,” Dante replied, “is the forensic debt dossier on your brother, Julian. He owes three point six million dollars to an illegal sports betting syndicate operating out of South Boston. A syndicate whose debt obligations were purchased by my family three hours ago.”
Vivien’s hand flew to her mouth. “No... oh God, no...”
“Julian’s private jet did not land in Panama, Vivien,” Dante continued, his baritone dropping into a cold, terrifying cadence. “It was redirected to a private hangar at an industrial airfield in Newark. Julian is currently sitting in a cold room, waiting to see whether his sister understands the concept of total surrender.”
Vivien collapsed onto her knees among her scattered designer dresses, sobbing uncontrollably, clutching Dante’s polished leather shoe.
“Please! Please, Mr. Moretti! Don’t hurt him! I’ll do whatever you want! I’ll delete the files! I’ll sign whatever you want!”
“You will sign a full, sworn confession detailing Vance Sterling’s corporate embezzlement scheme,” Dante commanded, looking down at her with cold, unvarnished disgust. “You will surrender every asset, every diamond, and every dollar Vance transferred to you over the last eighteen months back to the Kensington Family Trust.”
He pulled his foot away from her grasping fingers as if stepping away from garbage.
“And then, you and your son will board a commercial flight to London. You will never set foot in the United States again. If you ever return to New York—if your name ever appears in the same sentence as Sloan or Ara Kensington—I will have Julian’s hands mailed to you in a parcel post, and you will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder in the dark.”
Dante turned toward the door.
“Salvatore. Clean the apartment. Leave her with one suitcase and her passport. The car to JFK leaves in forty minutes.”
“Understood, boss,” Salvatore rumbled.
May you like
Dante walked out of the penthouse without looking back, the sound of Vivien Croft’s broken, hysterical weeping fading behind him into the cold Manhattan night.
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