Chapter 5 - The Reckoning of Nico

The sub-level holding vault beneath Caruso Tower was cold, smelling of damp concrete, old iron, and ozone.

Nico hung by his handcuffed wrists from the steel support beam in the center of the room, his designer suit torn, his face battered and swollen.

I stood five feet from him, having removed my jacket, my sleeves rolled up to the elbows, watching him with cold, emotionless detachment.

"Matteo... please," Nico gasped, coughing up dark blood. "We're cousins. We played in the orchards of Palermo together when we were boys. Our fathers were brothers."

"My father built this empire on loyalty, Nico," I said, my voice quiet as a falling leaf. "You took ninety million dollars from our people. But that wasn't your greatest sin."

I stepped closer until my face was inches from his.

"You watched Elena hold my unborn child in her womb," I whispered, every syllable vibrating with a father’s unyielding vengeance. "You knew she was sleeping on the floor. You knew my daughter had holes in her shoes. You watched them starve in a five-hundred-square-foot tenement for six years while you drank forty-year-old cognac in private clubs."

Nico’s eyes filled with raw, animal terror. "I'll give the money back! Every dollar! The Swiss accounts, the Cayman trusts, the properties in Miami—take everything!"

"I already took the accounts, Nico," I replied, pulling a signed asset forfeiture deed from my folder. "Your signature was validated by federal marshals twenty minutes ago. You are broke. You are stripped of the Caruso name. And by morning, the state police will receive a dossier containing forty counts of corporate arson, contract fraud, and grand larceny."

Nico’s mouth fell open. "You're handing me to the police? You're not going to kill me?"

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"Death is too quick for what you did to my family, Nico," I said, turning my back on him as the heavy iron door was unbolted by the guards. "You will spend the next thirty years in a maximum-security federal penitentiary, wearing orange jumpsuits, eating cold porridge, and remembering every single day that the little girl you tried to erase owns everything you ever touched."

I walked through the doorway, nodding to the guards. "Deliver him to the FBI field office at 5:00 AM."