Chapter 2 - The Face on the Wall
The silence in the library was not empty. It was suffocating.
My daughters stood before the tall mahogany console beneath the western window. The late afternoon sunlight filtered through the leaded glass, casting diamond-shaped shadows across the polished floorboards. On the console sat three framed photographs Isabelle had arranged years ago: our wedding in Amalfi, Nora’s baptism at St. Patrick’s, and a summer dinner at the Montauk estate five years back.
Olivia did not hesitate. Her small, pale hand reached out, her fingers trembling slightly, and tapped the glass of the Montauk photograph.
Grace stood just behind the girls, her hands resting lightly on Nora’s shoulders. Her gray eyes met mine across the room. There was no hesitation in them, only an intense, protective stillness.
I walked forward. Every step felt like wading through freezing water.
The photograph showed twenty people gathered around a long cedar table beneath string lights. At the head of the table sat my father, dead two years now. Beside him was Isabelle, her hair pinned up, laughing at a joke someone had just cracked. And standing directly behind her, his hand resting casually on the carved back of her chair, was a man with dark hair, tailored linen, and a custom silver ring on his pinky finger.
The ring bore a wolf’s head with emerald eyes.
Marcus Vance.
My underboss. The man who had taken a bullet meant for me outside a Brooklyn shipyard eight years ago. The man whose daughter’s college fund I paid, the man who held the keys to half my shipping docks, the man who had sat in the front pew at Isabelle’s funeral and wept so hard his shoulders shook.
"Sophie," I said, dropping to one knee so my eyes were level with hers. I kept my voice low, stripping away the harshness that normally lived in my throat. "Who did you see?"
Sophie leaned into Grace’s skirt, but her eyes never left the photograph. She pointed her index finger directly at Marcus’s face.
"He stopped the car," Sophie whispered.
The words were so small they barely stirred the dust motes in the sunbeam, but to me, they hit like a hollow-point round straight through the sternum.
"Tell me, sweetheart," I coaxed, swallowing the acid rising in my throat. "Tell Daddy."
"Mommy was putting Nora in the seat," Olivia said, her voice stronger now, cracking with the rust of fourteen months of silence. "The man with the wolf came. He had a black hat. But I saw the wolf ring. He gave Mommy an envelope. Mommy threw it at him. She said, *'I'm telling Dominic what you did with the shipments.'*"
Olivia began to shake. Grace immediately knelt down, wrapping an arm around Olivia’s torso and pulling her against her chest. She didn't shush her. She didn't tell her it was okay, because it wasn't okay. She just held her ground like an anchor against a hurricane.
"And then?" I asked, my blood turning to pure kerosene.
"He pulled Mommy by her coat," Sophie sobbed softly, hiding her face in Grace’s shoulder. "He said Dominic is going down anyway. He pulled the trigger. Twice. Then he looked at us in the back seat. He tapped the window with the wolf ring. He told us if we ever said a word, he would come into our bedrooms while Daddy was sleeping and cut our tongues out."
The room went dead white at the edges of my vision.
For fourteen months, I had believed a rival crew—the Marcone family—had hit Isabelle in a drive-by extortion attempt gone wrong. I had waged a quiet, bloody war across five boroughs, burying seven men who had died swearing they knew nothing about my wife’s murder. And all the while, the animal who had pulled the trigger had been sitting at my right hand, sipping my scotch, helping me plan retaliations, and walking freely through the halls of my house.
He had threatened my babies. He had promised to enter their sanctuary and butcher them.
And that was why they had gone silent. Not just shock. Not just grief.
They were protecting me. They were terrified that speaking would sign their death warrants.
"Mr. Romano," Grace’s voice cut through the red haze blinding my eyes.
I looked at her. Her face was pale, but her jaw was set like iron.
"Breathe," she commanded quietly.
Nobody commanded Dominic Romano. Men had lost their teeth for raising their voices in my presence. But this young woman, wearing a flour-dusted apron and holding my weeping daughters, looked through the mob boss and spoke directly to the father whose soul was disintegrating on the rug.
I drew a long, ragged breath through my nose.
"Olivia. Sophie. Nora," I said, reaching out. My hands were massive compared to theirs, calloused and scarred from a life of violence. "Look at me."
They lifted their tear-stained faces.
"No one is ever going to hurt you again," I said, each word carved from bedrock. "No one is coming into your room. No one is touching a single hair on your heads. Do you understand me? Your father is right here. And I will burn the entire world to ash before I let anyone scare you again."
Olivia looked at my face, searching for the truth. Slowly, she stepped out from Grace’s embrace and reached out her small hand, pressing her fingers against my scarred knuckles.
"Don't let him come here, Daddy," she whispered.
"He's never walking out of here alive," I promised.
Grace looked at me sharply, a warning flash in her gray eyes. She was thinking of the children. She was thinking of the blood that was about to be spilled in their home.
Before I could answer her unspoken rebuke, the sound of tires crunching on gravel drifted through the tall library windows.
Two long honks echoed from the driveway.
The private gate signal.
I stood up slowly, crossing the room to the heavy velvet drapes. I parted them half an inch.
A black Mercedes-Maybach had just pulled up to the front steps. The driver’s door opened, and a bodyguard stepped out, scanning the grounds. Then the rear door opened.
A man stepped onto the driveway. He smoothed the lapels of his charcoal suit, adjusted his cuff links, and raised his left hand to check his watch.
On his pinky finger, catching the dying afternoon light, sat a heavy silver wolf ring with emerald eyes.
May you like
Marcus Vance was here.
***
