Chapter 9 - The Reckoning in the Snow
The snow began to fall as we emerged from the side doors of the academy, soft, fat white flakes drifting lazily through the amber glow of the streetlights.
Lily had fallen asleep ten minutes after the performance ended, her golden head slumped against my chest, her small fingers still hooked firmly into the lapel of my suit jacket. She was wrapped in my heavy cashmere overcoat, her tiny feet tucked into the warmth of the wool, while Marco pushed her empty wheelchair behind us.
We were five yards from the waiting convoy of black Suburbans when the shadows at the edge of the alley shifted.
Three men stepped out from behind the brick wall of the rectory. They wore heavy dark parkas with the hoods pulled low, their hands tucked suspiciously deep into their pockets. The man in the center was Salvatore Castiglione’s younger brother, Frankie—a greasy, reckless thug who had spent his life surviving on his family's reputation rather than his own intellect.
"Well, well," Frankie sneered, his voice wet and raspy in the freezing air. "The great Dominic Moretti. Playing nursemaid to a cripple in an alley. Salvatore told me you'd gone soft, but I didn't believe it until I saw the pink flowers, Don Dominic."
The street fell deathly still.
Behind me, the sound of five safety catches sliding off automatic weapons was instantaneous, a sharp metallic click that echoed against the wet brickwork. Sal and three soldiers stepped into a defensive semi-circle around Marco and the wheelchair, their eyes locked on the alley entrance.
I did not draw a weapon. I did not move quickly.
Slowly, carefully, I shifted Lily’s sleeping form in my left arm, ensuring that her face remained buried in my neck, that the cold wind did not touch her skin, and that my broad shoulder shielded her completely from the sight of the street.
I took three long, measured strides toward Frankie Castiglione.
My height and bulk seemed to expand in the dark, my silhouette blotting out the streetlight behind me until my shadow swallowed all three men. The cold that radiated from my face was far more terrifying than the winter night.
Frankie’s smirk wavered. His hand twitched inside his pocket, but before his fingers could tighten around the grip of his revolver, my right hand shot forward like a steel piston.
My fingers closed around his throat.
I lifted him six inches off the slush-covered asphalt with a single arm, slamming his back against the brick wall of the rectory with a dull, wet thud that knocked the wind clean out of his lungs. His two associates panicked, reaching for their waistbands, but Marco was already there, the cold barrel of a suppressed Glock pressed firmly beneath the chin of the man on the left, while Sal held the third at gunpoint against a dumpster.
"Listen to me, Frankie," I whispered. My voice was scarcely louder than the falling snow, but it carried the weight of an executioner's axe resting against his spine. "You have five seconds to choose how your life ends."
Frankie clawed at my wrist, his boots kicking uselessly in the air, his eyes bulging with animal terror as my fingers cut off his oxygen.
"If you ever say another word about this child," I said, leaning in until he could smell the mint on my breath and see the absolute void in my gray eyes, "if you or any man who carries your name so much as walks on the same side of the street as this school, I will not kill you. I will dismantle the Castiglione family brick by brick. I will bury your brothers in the foundations of the new pier, and I will leave you in a dark room until you forget your own mother's face. Do you believe me?"
He nodded frantically, a strangled, choking whimper escaping his purple lips.
I released him. He dropped into the dirty slush like a sack of wet sand, coughing and gasping for air as he scrambled backward on his hands and knees.
"Tell Salvatore I'll see him at the docks on Monday morning," I said, turning my back on him without a second glance. "Now get out of my sight before my daughter wakes up."
The word came out of my mouth before my conscious mind could stop it. My daughter.
May you like
Marco didn't say a word. He merely stepped back, his eyes steady, watching the three shadows scurry down the dark alleyway like rats fleeing a basement flood.
I walked to the rear door of the Suburban, stepping into the heated interior. I sat down on the leather bench, cradling Lily against my chest as the vehicle purred to life, its tires biting into the fresh snow as we pulled away into the quiet New York night.
