Chapter 4 - The Best Man's Trap
Down in the Cobalt Lounge, the silence was heavy enough to kill.
Tommy Callahan sat in a leather booth near the back, a half-empty glass of fifteen-year-old scotch resting between his hands. Four of my most loyal guards stood near the exits, their hands tucked inside their dark coats, their eyes glued to him.
The elevator doors slid open with a soft metallic ring.
I stepped out alone.
Tommy lifted his head, trying to force a confident, easy smile onto his face—the same smile he had used when we were twenty years old, stealing whiskey from docks and building an empire from blood and scrap metal.
"How is she, Leo?" Tommy asked smoothly. "Did the doc give her a sedative? You know how these shelter girls get when they see a big boss—"
I didn't answer.
I walked over to the bar, picked up a heavy crystal decanter, and poured myself two fingers of bourbon. I drank it in one smooth burn, set the glass down, and walked straight over to Tommy's booth.
SLAM!
My right hand slammed onto the polished oak table with enough force to rattle the ice in his glass.
"Green curtains," I said softly.
Tommy stopped breathing. The fake smile on his face didn't fade—it shattered into pieces.
"Excuse me?" Tommy whispered.
"A dark room with green curtains," I repeated, leaning down until my eyes were six inches from his nose. "A bitter taste in the water. A threat that if she ever spoke my name, I’d take a bullet in my sleep."
Tommy’s hand twitched toward his inner jacket pocket.
Before his fingers could even touch his leather holster, Gabe moved like lightning. His thick arm wrapped around Tommy's throat from behind, dragging him backward out of the booth, while another guard grabbed his right wrist and twisted it until a snub-nosed .38 revolver clattered onto the hardwood floor.
"Get your hands off me!" Tommy choked out, thrashing against Gabe's grip. "Leo! Are you insane?! I’m your brother! We bled together in South Philly!"
"You faked her death," I said, my voice eerily calm, devoid of all humanity. "You paid off the state coroner. You put a john doe's charred torso in a car, threw my wife's Rolex onto the front seat, and set it ablaze with military thermite."
"I saved your life!" Tommy roared, blood filling his face as Gabe tightened his grip.
"You kidnapped my pregnant wife!" I screamed, the rage finally ripping out of my throat like a wounded animal. I grabbed Tommy by his lapels, dragging him up until his boots barely scraped the floor. "Why, Tommy?! Why her?!"
"Because she was going to ruin everything!" Tommy spat, blood spraying from his lips. "She was persuading you to go clean! She had you buying legal real estate in Miami! She had you signing over the shipping docks to a public trust! You were going soft, Leo!"
"She was my wife!"
"She was a liability!" Tommy snarled, his eyes wild with unhinged green malice. "The Moretti family offered us fifty million for the northern piers! Fifty million! But you refused to sign because Clara wanted you out of the business before the baby came! You were going to walk away from twenty years of work for a woman!"
I stared at him in horror. The man I had called my brother for fifteen years had reduced my entire life—my love, my family, my future—to a real estate transaction.
"So you took her," I whispered.
"I didn't mean to keep her forever," Tommy panted, a dark, sickly smile touching his mouth. "I kept her in a safehouse in Newark. I drugging her water with memory suppressants just to keep her quiet until the Moretti deal closed. But five months ago, the power grid failed during a storm. The dumb bitch broke a window and ran."
He let out a raspy, ugly laugh.
"I searched every hospital and ditch in the state for three weeks," Tommy sneered. "I thought she died in the rain! I thought the baby died! And then tonight... she walks into your bar with a mop in her hand. Destiny is a hilarious thing, isn't it, Leo?"
I looked at him for five long seconds.
I didn't punch him. I didn't draw my gun. The sheer depth of his betrayal was too vast for simple violence.
"Where is the Moretti deal happening, Tommy?" I asked quietly.
Tommy’s smile faded. "What?"
"You didn't do this alone," I said. "The Moretti family wouldn't buy those piers without knowing I was out of the picture. They knew she was alive. They helped you hide her."
Tommy went pale again. Real pale.
"Gabe," I said, turning my back on him. "Take him down to the meat locker in the basement. Chain him to the ice pipe. Don't let him die until I come back."
May you like
"Leo, wait!" Tommy shrieked as Gabe dragged him backward toward the heavy steel door of the cellar. "Leo! You can't fight the Morettis alone! They have fifty men at the docks right now! They’re moving the first shipment tonight! Leo!"
The steel door of the meat locker slammed shut with a heavy THUD, burying his screams in the dark.
