Chapter 3 - Poison in the Walls
By 2:00 AM, the estate was submerged in silence.
Outside, the Atlantic ocean crashed against the rocky cliffs below the property, a rhythmic, booming thud that echoed through the stone basement. Rain lashed against the high windows of the grand foyer.
I stood in the darkness of the second-floor gallery, looking down at the marble entrance hall.
Four of my top enforcers—men who had bled for me in street wars for a decade—were stationed at the entrances. Frank, Paul, Jimmy, and Leo. I had paid their mortgages, sent their children to private schools, and protected them from federal indictments.
One of them was a snake.
One of them had let a federal informant or Croft’s people get close enough to my daughters to plant a poison narrative in Lucia’s mind.
I walked quietly down the carpeted hallway toward the nursery suite.
The heavy mahogany door was unlocked. I pushed it open without making a sound.
A single nightlight shaped like a star cast a soft blue glow across the room. On the large king-sized bed in the center of the room, all three of my daughters were sleeping soundly.
And sitting on the floor beside the bed, her back resting against the bedframe, her head tilted slightly to the side, was Elena.
She had fallen asleep holding Valentina’s tiny hand.
I stepped into the room, my soft leather shoes silent on the rug. I leaned down to lift Elena’s shoulders, intending to move her to the guest armchair near the window, but the moment my fingers touched her sweater, her eyes snapped open.
She didn't scream. She didn't jump. In a fraction of a second, her right hand swept out, snatching a silver butter knife from the nightstand tray, pressing the dull tip straight against my throat.
I froze, looking down at her.
Elena blinked against the blue light, recognizing my face. Slowly, her breathing settled, and she lowered the butter knife, her cheeks flushing dark red.
“Force of habit,” she whispered, her voice rough with sleep. “I’m sorry, Mr. Russo.”
“You have quick reflexes for a kitchen worker,” I murmured, stepping back.
“When you live with a man who hits you from behind while you’re sleeping, you learn to wake up light,” she said, pulling her hands into her lap. She looked up at the three sleeping girls. “Lucia had a nightmare at midnight. She woke up screaming.”
My chest tightened. “What did she say?”
“She didn't say anything,” Elena replied softly, reaching out to gently brush a dark lock of hair off Mia’s forehead. “She just kept crying and pointing at the closet door. She said the man in the suit told her if she spoke to you, you’d make her disappear like Mommy.”
My blood turned to liquid fire.
A man in a suit. Inside my estate. Inside my daughter’s bedroom corridor.
“When did this happen?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper, yet carrying a weight that made the air in the room thick.
“Two nights ago,” Elena said, turning her light blue eyes up to mine. “Before I arrived, Rosa told me the night guards were rotated. A man with a scar under his left eye was assigned to the nursery corridor.”
Jimmy.
Jimmy 'The Blade' Santos. A man who had been on my security detail for eight years. His left cheek bore a jagged white line from an alley fight in South Brooklyn back in 2018.
“Did Lucia tell you anything else?” I asked.
“She told me the man gave her a small silver coin,” Elena said. She reached into her apron pocket, pulling out a heavy, round metal piece, handing it to me.
I held it up to the blue nightlight.
It wasn't a coin. It was an old silver poker chip from the Golden Lily—an illegal underground casino in Chinatown run by the Moretti family, a syndicate that had been trying to push into my dockland territories for six months.
Jimmy hadn't just turned for District Attorney Croft. He was playing both sides—taking money from the Morettis and setting up a legal ambush for Internal Affairs.
“Elena,” I said quietly, looking down at her.
“Yes, Mr. Russo?”
“Starting tonight, your salary is quadrupled,” I said. “You don't clean floors anymore. You don't make soup. You don't leave my daughters’ side for a single second. If anyone—including my own men—tries to enter this room without me, you press the red panic button under that nightstand.”
Elena looked at the silver chip in my hand, then up at my face.
“Are you going to kill him?” she asked bluntly.
I looked at her, expecting to see fear or disgust in her eyes. But there was none. Only a dark, pragmatic understanding of the world we lived in.
“Men who threaten children don't get second chances in my world, Elena,” I replied coldly.
She stood up slowly, smoothing down her gray dress, her light blue eyes locked onto mine. “Just make sure he doesn't come back near this door.”
I turned and walked out of the nursery, pulling the heavy door shut behind me, locking it with my thumbprint scanner.
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I pulled my custom 9mm pistol from my shoulder holster, checked the magazine, and slid a suppressor onto the barrel with a quiet, metallic CLACK.
It was 2:30 AM. Time to clean house.
