Chapter 6
Richard looked up at the physician. "Speak from there, Doctor. Let the entire room hear what my son calls discipline."
Dr. Mercer cleared his throat, glancing down at the trembling figures of Mark and Claudia with undisguised contempt.
"The boy has second-degree frostnip on both feet," Dr. Mercer reported, his voice crisp and clinical. "If he had remained outside for another six minutes, we would be amputating toes tonight. But that is not the worst of it, Don Richard."
"Go on," Richard commanded, his hands clenching behind his back.
"Noah is severely malnourished," Dr. Mercer continued. "He is in the fifth percentile for weight at his age. His ribcage is clearly visible. And across his lower back and thighs, I counted nine separate linear contusions consistent with being struck by a heavy leather dress belt."
A collective murmur of revulsion rippled through the gathered capos. In the Bellacorte syndicate, violence was a tool of war, business, and territory. But harming an innocent child of their own blood was an unforgivable sin—a violation of the sacred oath of the family.
"A belt," Richard murmured, the words dropping like lead weights into the frozen air. He turned slowly back to Mark. "Who held the belt, Mark?"
Mark lay frozen on the floor, his eyes darting frantically toward Claudia. "Dad... it wasn't me! I swear to God, it wasn't me! Claudia said he needed a firm hand—"
"You lying bastard!" Claudia screamed, lunging at Mark with clawed fingers. "You hit him because he spilled grape juice on your laptop! You took your belt off right in the dining room while I begged you to stop!"
"Shut up, Claudia!" Mark yelled back, swatting her hands away. "You're the one who locked him in the unheated pantry for two days! You told the maids not to feed him!"
"Enough," Richard said.
The word was spoken at conversational volume, yet both of them clamped their mouths shut instantly, trembling on the floor like dogs in a shelter.
"Frank," Richard called out without turning around.
From the row of bodyguards, a slender man in a charcoal suit stepped forward, holding an open laptop. Frank, Richard’s chief financial auditor, turned the screen toward the room.
"Report on the Denver accounts, Frank," Richard said.
"Don Richard, you authorized sixty thousand dollars a month for Noah's trust and household care," Frank stated in a flat, ruthless tone. "Over the past four months, two hundred and forty thousand dollars was deposited. Exactly six hundred dollars was spent on food and pediatric care for the boy. The rest—two hundred and thirty-nine thousand dollars—was wired to an offshore casino in Macau to cover Mark’s high-stakes baccarat debts, and eighty thousand went to a jeweler in Aspen for Claudia's emerald necklace."
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Claudia gasped, her hand flying to her bare throat where the necklace had snapped during the fall.
"You starved my flesh and blood," Richard said, his grey eyes dead and unblinking, "so you could wear emeralds to my birthday dinner."
