Chapter 8 - The Price of Loyalty
The terrace doors remained shut as the smoke from Tommy’s shotgun shell drifted lazily through the ruined chandelier.
The fake waitress was pinned to the floor near the sideboard, Winnie’s heavy work shoe planted firmly on the back of the woman’s neck.
Winnie didn't look at the gun in Rhett’s hand; she reached down, grabbed the woman’s twisted wrist, and pulled a small plastic vial from her apron pocket.
“Same stuff,” Winnie announced, her voice calm and level despite the chaos around them.
“Industrial concentrate.”
“Enough in this bottle to kill every man sitting at this table twice over.”
The six capos who had remained in their seats turned their furious, incredulous glares directly at Lorenzo Marquetti.
These were men who could tolerate a street war, an assassination in a parking garage, or a car bomb on the highway.
Poisoning a family dinner table, however, was a violation of the old code that even the most ruthless among them considered an unforgivable sin.
“Lorenzo,” old man Moretti growled, his hand resting on the heavy snub-nosed revolver he had pulled from his waistband.
“You brought poison into Rhett’s house?”
“You brought an outsider into our sit-down to wipe out the table?”
Lorenzo turned around slowly, his back pressed against the cold glass of the terrace doors.
His tailored charcoal suit was covered in white plaster dust, and his expensive silver-tipped cane lay abandoned five feet away on the Persian rug.
“Don't listen to this peasant,” Lorenzo spat, pointing a trembling, manicured finger at Winnie.
“She’s the plant!”
“She’s been working here for three weeks!”
“Who vetted her?”
“Who brought her into the private quarters?”
“Frank Corsi vetted me, you miserable little rat,” Winnie said, stepping off the pinned waitress and walking toward him.
She held the shortened hickory floor scraper in her right hand, the steel edge gleaming with malevolent utility.
“And you paid Frank seventy-five thousand dollars to let your girl slip through the delivery alley at midnight.”
“You’re pathetic, Lorenzo.”
“You couldn't even kill your own cousin like a man; you had to hire a scullery girl from Jersey to do it while he was sleeping.”
Lorenzo’s eyes darted frantically toward the other capos, looking for a single face that showed sympathy or doubt.
He found none.
Every man in the room was looking at him with the cold, dead detachment of butchers watching a steer enter the chute.
“Rhett,” Lorenzo pleaded, his voice dropping into a frantic, reedy whine.
“We’re blood.”
“Our fathers built this empire together on the docks.”
“You can't let a cleaning woman dictate the fate of the Marquetti line!”
Rhett took three slow, deliberate steps toward his cousin, the pistol lowered slightly, but his finger steady on the trigger guard.
“She didn't dictate your fate, Lorenzo,” Rhett whispered.
“You wrote it yourself when you slipped the check into Frank’s locker.”
“You thought because she cleans the toilets, she doesn't have eyes.”
“You thought because the people in this house wear aprons and rubber gloves, they’re invisible.”
Rhett stopped two feet from his cousin, towering over him, his shadow falling across Lorenzo’s terrified face.
“They see everything, Lorenzo.”
“They see the grease, they see the dirt, and they see when a rat crawls into the pantry.”
Before Lorenzo could scream, Rhett shifted his weight, drove his left fist directly into Lorenzo’s solar plexus, and caught him by the throat as he doubled over.
The crime boss hoisted his cousin up until Lorenzo’s toes barely grazed the floor, dragging him toward the open dining room table.
He slammed Lorenzo down onto the mahogany surface, right into the puddle of frothing, poisoned panna cotta that still hissed against the wood.
Lorenzo shrieked as the caustic chemical touched the skin of his cheek, burning like battery acid.
“Tommy!” Rhett barked over his shoulder.
Tommy stepped forward immediately, his shotgun held low, his face set in a hard, determined line.
“Sir?”
“Take Lorenzo down to Frank’s cell,” Rhett commanded.
“Put him in the irons, and make sure he doesn't have a belt or shoelaces.”
“The New York families are going to want to hear him explain who gave him the contact for the Jersey hit before we put him in the furnace.”
Tommy nodded, grabbing Lorenzo by the collar and dragging the weeping, burned underboss out through the double service doors.
The dining room fell into an uneasy, breathless silence once more.
Rhett turned to face the remaining capos, his eyes sweeping across the table like an artillery battery searching for targets.
“The sit-down is concluded,” Rhett said, his voice flat and terrifying.
“The split remains forty-sixty.”
“Anyone who has an objection can visit Lorenzo in the cellar before sunset.”
The old men didn't say a word; they stood up, pocketed their weapons, bowed their heads with absolute deference, and filed out of the room like ghosts.
Only Rhett and Winnie Doyle remained among the broken glass, plaster dust, and spilled poison.
Rhett looked down at his ruined suit, then at Winnie, who had already picked up a linen napkin and was methodically wiping the caustic foam from the mahogany table.
“You’re still cleaning,” Rhett noted, his voice carrying an exhaustion that went bone-deep.
“Someone has to,” Winnie said without looking up.
“If this stuff sits on the walnut for more than ten minutes, it’ll eat the grain right down to the substrate.”
Rhett walked over, reached out with one long, scarred hand, and gently took the napkin from her fingers.
She looked up, meeting his dark, intense gaze.
“You saved my life twice in twelve hours, Winnie Doyle,” he said softly.
“I did my job,” she replied.
“Your job was eighty dollars a shift and a free lunch in the scullery,” Rhett said.
“You gave me my life back.”
“Now name your price.”
“Money, a house on the hill, a car with a driver—whatever you want in this city, it’s yours by five o'clock.”
Winnie looked at the vast, blood-stained room, then at the powerful, dangerous man standing in front of her.
“I don't want your blood money, Mr. Marquetti,” she said quietly.
“Then what do you want?” he asked, genuinely baffled.
“I want you to leave the door unlocked,” she whispered.
Rhett blinked, caught entirely off guard by the request.
“What?”
“No more locked doors after midnight,” Winnie said, her brown eyes burning with an ancient, unyielding sorrow.
“A man who locks himself away from his own people is already dead; he’s just waiting for someone to bring him the poison.”
“If you want to survive this city, Rhett Marquetti, you keep the door open and you look the world in the face.”
Rhett stared at her for a long, silent moment, the hard lines of his face softening in a way that no living person had ever seen.
“The door stays open,” he agreed in a low, solemn promise.
“On one condition.”
Winnie frowned.
“What condition?”
“You stay,” Rhett said, his voice dropping into a quiet, undeniable demand.
“Not as a cleaner.”
May you like
“As the only person in this house with the guts to tell me when the floor is rotten.”
***
