Chapter 6
The heavy double doors of the conservatory clicked shut as the enforcers sealed every exit from the outside. The warmth of the afternoon sun remained bright and luminous, but inside the room, thirty guests sat like condemned prisoners waiting for the firing squad.
Davina had collapsed onto her knees beside the stone pillar, her emerald gown bunching around her trembling legs. Her mascara was ruined, her breath hitching in ragged gasps.
“I didn't want him dead, Torin,” she wept, the dam of her defiance breaking completely under the weight of his unyielding gaze. “Marcus told me Julian was going to dismantle the logistics network! He said Julian was going to turn over state's evidence to the federal prosecutors in Brooklyn! He said we were all going to spend the rest of our lives in a federal penitentiary!”
At the center of the table, Marcus Sterling leaped up from his chair.
“She’s lying!” Sterling roared, his face turning an apoplectic shade of crimson. “She’s a cornered animal trying to drag the entire board into her filth! I built this syndicate alongside Julian Ashenford! I carried his coffin!”
Torin did not look at Sterling. He walked over to the side table, poured a glass of cold mineral water from a crystal carafe, and took a slow, deliberate sip.
“You carried his coffin, Marcus,” Torin murmured, setting the glass down with a soft, final ring against the wood. “Because you wanted to be sure... he was six feet deep.”
Torin walked slowly back toward the elder. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his tailored suit jacket, rolling them back once to expose the dark, sharp tattoos coiling across his forearms.
“Tell me about the Swiss accounts, Marcus,” Torin said softly.
Sterling’s eyes darted frantically toward the sealed glass doors, then toward the four capos standing behind his chair. “There are no Swiss accounts, Torin. This is madness! Call Don Moretti! Call the Commission in New York! You cannot execute a sitting council elder without a formal tribunal!”
“The tribunal is sitting in this room, Marcus,” Torin replied, his voice dropping into that chilling, intimate cadence. “And the verdict has already been rendered.”
Torin reached inside his breast pocket and withdrew an encrypted satellite smartphone. He tapped the screen with his thumb, setting it on the bleached oak table between Sterling’s silverware.
On the screen was a live video feed from the third-floor office in Sterling’s private estate in Greenwich.
Two of Torin’s soldiers in tactical black gear were standing over an open wall safe, removing stacks of offshore bearer bonds, three encrypted hard drives, and an unsealed envelope bearing the wax seal of the European pharmaceutical consortium.
Sterling’s breath caught in his throat. He sank slowly back into his chair, his hands shaking so violently that his water glass tipped over, spilling cold water across his place setting.
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“You breached my home...” Sterling whispered, his voice cracked and hollow.
“I breached your home three hours ago, Marcus,” Torin said, leaning forward until his shadow completely engulfed the older man. “Before the first bottle of champagne was uncorked. I knew about the digitalis the day I returned from Chicago. I just needed to see... who would sit at my mother’s table... and watch her starve.”
