Chapter 6 - Blood in the Water
Six months had passed, but in the underworld of New York, six months without cash flow was an eternity.
Silas Romano sat at the head of the conference table in his headquarters near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The room reeked of cheap takeout and sweat. The days of catered meals from four-star Italian restaurants were over; the Romano family was hemorrhaging money at an unsustainable rate.
Across the table sat Dominic Lucchese, a man whose family had supplied the high-interest capital for the Pier 19 expansion. Dominic wasn't wearing a designer suit. He wore a heavy leather jacket and a gold watch that ticked loudly in the suffocating silence.
“Three months, Silas,” Dominic said, tapping the mahogany surface with a blunt fingernail. “Three months since the first missed payment. The Commission was patient because Vincent had honor. But Vincent is worm food, and you don’t have his juice.”
“The docks are tied up in legal technicalities,” Silas barked, his face gray, his eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights and excessive cocaine use. “My attorneys are filing a petition with the state supreme court this Friday. We’re voiding the trust. It’s an illegal foreign entity designed to evade domestic estate taxes.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your lawyers, Silas,” Dominic said smoothly, leaning forward. “The ships are rerouting to Philadelphia and Savannah. Our containers are sitting in customs impounds. The Colombians lost sixty keys of white because your dock foremen couldn’t get the cranes moving. That’s twelve million dollars off our bottom line.”
Dominic stood up, buttoning his jacket. “The Commission met last night. You have until the fifteenth of this month to clear the debt—all eighty million, plus twenty-four million in penalties. If the wire doesn't clear, we take your warehouses. We take your trucking lines. And then we take your skin.”
Dominic walked out, leaving the heavy oak door open.
Silas grabbed a glass water pitcher and threw it against the wall, sending shards of glass and cold water raining down on Tommy, who stood near the window with his arms crossed.
“Where is she?!” Silas roared, his chest heaving, his tie crooked. “Six months, Tommy! Six fucking months! You have fifty men on the payroll, and none of you can find a five-foot-eight woman who weighs two hundred pounds? What, did she sprout wings and fly to Mars?!”
Tommy didn't flinch. Over the last six months, his respect for Silas had evaporated. Silas had become erratic, violent, and paranoid. Khloe Sinclair had already packed her bags two weeks ago when the credit cards associated with the Romano corporate accounts started bouncing at Bergdorf Goodman. She had fled to an apartment in Miami, paid for by a junior associate of the Gambino family.
“She’s not using her name, Silas,” Tommy said flatly. “She’s not using her old social security number. Her father set up an ironclad network of dummy identities before he died. The woman we’re looking for doesn't exist on paper.”
“Then find who’s funding her!” Silas screamed, stepping into Tommy’s face, spittle flying from his lips. “Find the broker who filed the injunction! Find the lawyer in Delaware who bought our secondary mortgage notes last week! Somebody is strangling us, Tommy! Somebody is buying our debt for thirty cents on the dollar!”
“The firm is called *Black Anchor Maritime*,” Tommy answered calmly. “Registered in Delaware. Operated out of Savannah. We tried to trace the board of directors, but it hits a wall of Swiss holding companies. The only name on the public record is an attorney named Marcus Vance.”
Silas froze. His pupils dilated.
“Vance?” he whispered. “Marcus Vance? The old bootlegger from Georgia? He was Vincent’s blood brother in the seventies.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said. “And yesterday, Black Anchor purchased the default notices on our three main warehouses in Queens. As of this morning, Silas... you don’t own your headquarters. They do. We’re squatting on their property.”
Silas slumped into his high-backed leather chair, his hands shaking. The reality of his situation closed around him like a noose.
He was ruined.
The alliance with Vincent Costello, the grand scheme to use the fat, quiet daughter to secure a fifty-year dynasty—it had all turned into a trap. Carmela hadn't just run; she had methodically dismantled his life from the outside in.
“Get Vance on the phone,” Silas croaked, his voice cracking with desperation. “Tell him I’ll meet him. Anywhere. Any terms. I’ll give them forty percent of the dock revenue. Just lift the injunction and give me back the operating permits.”
Tommy pulled a small, folded envelope from his pocket and tossed it onto the desk in front of Silas.
“I already spoke to his people,” Tommy said quietly. “They don’t want forty percent.”
Silas tore open the envelope. Inside was a single printed card with an address in lower Manhattan and a time: *Tomorrow, 9:00 PM.*
Below the address was a handwritten note in neat, familiar cursive:
*Come alone. Bring the deed to the Romano family compound in New Jersey. If Tommy brings a gun, you leave in a body bag.*
Silas stared at the handwriting. The elegant loops, the firm downstrokes. It was the same handwriting that used to leave him notes on the kitchen counter reminding him to take his dry cleaning or wishing him good luck at his morning sit-downs.
“Carmela,” Silas whispered, his jaw trembling with a toxic mixture of rage and terror. “She’s in the city.”
“What do you want to do?” Tommy asked.
May you like
Silas looked up, his eyes bloodshot, a dark, manic grin twisting his lips. “What do I want to do? I’m going to meet my wife. And once she signs those releases, Tommy... she’s never leaving that room.”
***
