Chapter 5
From the ruins of the cake cart, a wet, choking groan broke the silence.
Declan Rourke hauled himself onto his hands and knees, spitting thick red blood and white frosting onto the grass. His silk suit was ruined, torn across the back from the jagged edges of the collapsed wooden crates. He dragged himself upright, leaning heavily against the trunk of an ornamental birch tree, his eyes burning with feral, venomous malice.
"You're a dead woman, Valeria," Declan wheezed, wiping his chin with a trembling hand. "You think you can hit me? In front of thirty witnesses? The Rourke organization has forty soldiers stationed at the front gate right now. One phone call, and this entire lawn becomes a cemetery."
Valeria did not even turn her body toward him. She simply tilted her head, her gold signet ring catching the sunlight as she checked her wristwatch.
"Two-fifteen," she murmured.
"What?" Declan spat, squinting through a rapidly swelling eye.
"At one-forty-five, your forty soldiers at the front gate were approached by six unmarked municipal utility vans," Valeria explained, her voice as conversational as if she were discussing the weather. "The men inside were not utility workers. They were my personal security detachment from Brooklyn. Your men have already surrendered their weapons, Declan. They are currently lying face-down on the asphalt outside my gate, secured with plastic zip-ties."
Declan’s mouth fell open, the blood freezing in his veins. "You... you're lying."
"Call them," Valeria said softly.
Declan frantically jammed his hand into his trouser pocket, pulling out a cracked smartphone. He dialed with shaking fingers, holding the receiver to his ear. The phone rang once, twice, three times—before clicking open.
A rough, gravelly voice answered on speaker: "Rourke? If you're looking for your boys, they're taking a nap in the ditch. Don Valeria owns the road. Don't call this number again."
The line clicked dead.
Declan dropped the phone. It tumbled into the soft grass, the screen flickering before going black. The arrogant swagger that had defined him ten minutes ago evaporated, leaving behind a terrified, cornered animal.
Arthur chuckled from the padded bench—a dry, rasping sound that carried fifty years of underworld dominance. "You see, boy? You played chess with the board, but Valeria owns the timber the table was carved from. My daughter didn't inherit this syndicate; she conquered it while your father was still running numbers in Queens."
"Declan, do something!" Camille wailed from the floor, clutching her brother's trousers as she struggled to her feet. "Call Uncle Marcus! Call the Philadelphia families!"
"Uncle Marcus isn't coming, Camille," Valeria said, walking slowly toward the siblings. "Marcus Rourke was picked up by federal agents at Teterboro Airport forty minutes ago. It turns out someone provided the Southern District with the complete financial manifests of your family's offshore shell corporations in the Bahamas."
Camille gasped, looking at her brother in sheer horror. "The manifests? Nobody had those except..."
Camille’s eyes slowly drifted back toward Luca.
Luca took half a step backward, his hands trembling violently. "Camille... no, I didn't—"
"You gave them to her?" Camille shrieked, lunging at her fiancé with clawed fingers. "You traded my family's books to protect yourself?!"
May you like
Valeria stepped between them, her presence cutting off the fight like an iron curtain.
"He didn't give them to me, Camille," Valeria said softly. "I took them from his laptop three weeks ago. My son is ambitious, but he is remarkably careless with his passwords."
