Chapter 9 - The Fall of Richard Harrison
With the backing of the old don, the house of cards fell instantly.
The next afternoon, Vincent Russo was picked up by his father's loyalists at a private airfield trying to flee to South America. He wasn't killed—Salvatore wasn't that merciful to a son who betrayed blood. Instead, Vincent was stripped of every asset, permanently exiled to a remote, heavily guarded estate in a non-extradition country, completely cut off from the world.
As for my uncle Richard, his trial was a national sensation.
I sat in the front row of the federal courtroom as Arthur Vance presented the unassailable evidence: the forged letters, the shell company bank accounts, and the testimony of the logistics managers who had carried out the smuggling under Richard's explicit orders.
Richard looked broken. Sitting at the defense table, his expensive suit looked too big for him. When the jury returned with a verdict of guilty on all counts, he looked back at me, his eyes pleading for a mercy he had never shown to Elena or me.
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I stood up, fastened my suit button, and turned my back on him. The empire he tried to steal was now entirely mine, but more importantly, it was clean. Harrison Global Enterprises severed every tie to the dark underbelly of the city, rebuilding its foundations on transparency and honor.
The shadows that had loomed over my life for six long years had finally been driven away.
