Chapter 3 - The King's Table
The Riviera Room was an institution of the old Marchetti regime, a sprawling, velvet-lined restaurant in Little Italy that smelled of garlic, expensive cigars, and fifty years of unprosecuted crimes. The windows were opaque, the walls reinforced with soundproofing insulation, and the basement contained a private butcher shop where more than one rival had been reduced to something that could be carried out in a trash bag.
Tonight, the main dining room was filled with the senior leadership of the family. Sixty men in tailored silk suits sat at long tables, their voices loud with wine and the easy arrogance of an organization that believed it owned the local police precinct.
At the head table sat Vincent Marchetti. He was sixty-eight years old, a massive man with silver hair combed straight back, a face like an old bulldog, and hands that could still crush a windpipe if he caught a man off guard. He was laughing, a glass of crystal-clear grappa in his hand, as three of his capos toasted his thirty years as the family’s underboss.
The heavy double doors at the back of the restaurant opened, and a sudden draft of cold, rain-damp air cut through the warm, heavy atmosphere of the room.
The laughter died down, table by table, as Logan Marchetti walked into the room.
He hadn't changed his clothes. His gray trousers were still dark with mud from the Greystone driveway, his white shirt collar was open, and his hair was damp from the storm outside. He wore no overcoat, and the Kimber 1911 was visible at his waistband, the black steel stark against the white fabric of his shirt.
He didn't look at the capos who stood up as he passed. He walked straight down the center aisle of the restaurant, his boots making a dull, heavy sound on the thick carpet, until he stopped at the foot of the head table, directly opposite his uncle.
Vincent looked up, his thick eyebrows knitting together in a display of paternal concern that Logan had seen a thousand times before. "Logan? What the hell happened to you, kid? Marcus said you went up to the country house to check the roofing. You look like you’ve been digging ditches."
Logan didn't answer immediately. He reached down, grabbed an empty chair from a neighboring table, and dragged it over to the front of his uncle’s position. The screech of the metal legs against the floor was the only sound in the entire restaurant. Sixty men stood motionless, their hands drifting toward their jackets, waiting for a signal that hadn't come yet.
Logan sat down, leaning his elbows on the white tablecloth, his eyes locking onto Vincent’s heavy, weathered face.
"I found something at Greystone, Uncle," Logan said. His voice wasn't loud, but it possessed a strange, vibrating intensity that carried to every corner of the silent room.
Vincent took a slow sip of his grappa, his expression unchanging. "Yeah? The old house has been empty a long time. Probably full of rats."
"Not rats," Logan said. "Children."
A faint, nearly imperceptible twitch occurred in the corner of Vincent’s left eye. It lasted for a fraction of a second, but to Logan—a man who had spent his entire life reading the micro-expressions of killers—it was as loud as a gunshot.
"Two little girls," Logan continued, his fingers tapping a slow, rhythmic beat against the tablecloth. "Honey-blond hair. Gray-green eyes. One of them carries a stuffed rabbit with a red plaid patch on its belly. The other has a sketchbook filled with drawings of my sister."
The silence in the restaurant grew heavier, until the air felt thick enough to choke on. The capos at the table shifted their weight, their eyes darting between the young Don and the old underboss.
Vincent slowly set his glass down. The smile was entirely gone now, replaced by the cold, flat mask of a man who had ordered twenty executions before Logan was old enough to shave. "You’re tired, Logan. You’ve been working too hard down at the docks. You’re seeing things that aren't there."
"They’re there, Vincent," Logan said softly, leaning closer. "They’re at a safehouse right now, under Marcus Reed’s protection. And the older one—Luna—she told me about a man who used to visit their blue house. A man she called Mr. Gray. A man who brought envelopes every month to make sure Elena didn't try to leave."
Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out a single object, setting it gently onto the white cloth between them.
It was a small, silver cufflink, engraved with the initials V.M. It was covered in dried, dark valley mud, matching the splatters on Logan’s clothes.
"Marcus found it in the crawlspace beneath the porch at Greystone," Logan said, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a razor blade against the skin. "You must have dropped it last year. The night Elena 'fell down the stairs' because she tried to run from your collectors."
Vincent didn't look at the cufflink. He looked directly into his nephew’s eyes, his massive chest rising and falling with a slow, deliberate rhythm. "You think you can come into my room, in front of my men, and make these kinds of accusations, kid? I built this family while your father was still in diapers. Every dollar in your pocket came from the structures I set up."
"I don't care about the money, Vincent," Logan said, his hand slowly coming down onto the grip of the Kimber 1911 at his waist. "I care about the eight years I spent mourning a sister who was trapped in a cage you built for her. I care about the fact that she died in the dark because she was afraid of the monster who shared her blood."
May you like
He stood up, looking down at the old man. "The dinner is over. You have until sunrise to clear your things out of the office in Brooklyn. If I see you in the city after six AM, I will show you exactly what the king of the stone house does to monsters."
Without waiting for a reply, Logan turned his back on the sixty armed men in the room and walked out into the rain, leaving his uncle alone at the head of a table that had suddenly become very cold.
