Chapter 4 - The Taped Box Beneath the Floorboards
To destroy a rat nest, you do not simply poison one rat; you find where they breed.
That night, while the estate slept, I brought my most trusted lieutenant, Leo, into my private office. Leo was a silence-keeper, a man who had been with my father before me, a ghost who moved in the shadows of New York without leaving a trace.
"I need everything," I told Leo, throwing the ledger photos onto the glass desk. "Bank accounts, offshore transfers, wire logs. Every cent diverted from the Santoro Relief Foundation over the past four years. Find out where it went."
Leo looked at the documents, his weathered face hardening like cured leather. "Marco Vane?"
"And whoever helped him," I replied. "Check the foundation’s legal counsel, Arthur Pendelton, and the chief accountant, Julian Ross. I want names, dates, and account numbers."
"It will take forty-eight hours, Boss," Leo said smoothly.
"You have twenty-four," I said. "And Leo... secure Apartment 5B. Put four of our best men on the building. If anyone so much as looks at Elena or Luna, throw them in the river."
"Understood."
While Leo worked in the shadows, I took action of my own. I went down to the estate's vast basement archives—a labyrinth of stone vaults dating back to the 1920s.
Deep in the back of the third vault, behind row after row of forgotten family relics, stood Gabriel Russo’s old locker. It had remained untouched since the night he died.
I used my master key to turn the rusted lock. The heavy metal door creaked open, releasing the faint smell of old leather, gun oil, and cedar.
Inside hung Gabriel’s spare suit jacket, a pair of polished shoes, and a small wooden cigar box.
I pulled the box out and brought it to the light. It was locked with a small brass padlock. I didn't bother looking for a key; I took a steel pry bar from the wall and snapped the lock open with a harsh crack.
Inside the box lay a notebook, three cassette tapes, and a small, silver key attached to a brass tag marked GARDEN 4.
I picked up the notebook. It was written in Gabriel’s neat, precise handwriting.
I opened to the last entry, dated three days before his death.
If anything happens to me, it won't be the Morettis or the Commission that kills me. It will be Marco. I found the double books. Marco and Pendelton are skimming millions from the relief fund and laundering it through the construction projects in Queens. They are using the widow funds as their personal slush account. I recorded their meeting yesterday in the private garden house behind the estate. The tape is hidden in the wall of the locked garden. Matteo trusts Marco like a brother. If I show him this without absolute proof, Marco will turn it around on me. I have to secure the master tape first. If you are reading this, Matteo... I’m already gone. Check the locked garden. Save my family.
A cold shock ran through my veins, freezing the blood in my heart.
Gabriel hadn't just died taking bullets for me in Newark.
The ambush in Newark had been set up by Marco.
Marco knew Gabriel had uncovered the embezzlement. The two gunmen who opened fire in that restaurant hadn't been sent by our rivals, the Morettis. They had been hired by Marco to eliminate Gabriel before he could hand me the evidence.
Gabriel had saved my life, and in doing so, he took the secret to his grave—leaving his wife and daughter at the mercy of the very monster who ordered his execution.
My hands trembled violently as I closed the notebook. A rage so vast, so violent and consuming, flared up inside me that my vision blurred around the edges.
I gripped the edge of the metal table, my chest heaving as I sucked in air that felt like fire.
Four years.
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For four years, I had shared bread and wine with my brother's killer. I had trusted him with my security, my finances, my life. And all the while, he was watching Gabriel’s widow scrub my floors for pennies, starving her, slowly breaking her spirit so she would never have the strength or resources to ask questions.
"Marco," I whispered into the cold darkness of the vault, my voice soundless and lethal. "You will not die quickly."
