Chapter 3
Dominic slid down the marble wall until his knees hit the floor. The arrogance that had coated his features for six months was gone, replaced by the shivering, pathetic posture of a boy caught stealing from a king.
"Uncle Rocco... please," Dominic whispered, his chest heaving inside his torn suit. "I didn't know it was you. You told the family you were in Sicily until the spring! If I knew you were inspecting the property—"
"If you knew," Rocco said softly, each word separated by that terrifying, deliberate pause, "you would have hidden your filth. Like you always do."
Rocco unbuttoned the frayed, dirty overcoat and let it drop to the floorboards. Beneath the disguise, he was already wearing a tailored black dress shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, the dark ink on his collarbone and forearms standing out against his fair skin. He turned his slate-gray eyes toward the four doormen who had stood by while Dominic shoved the child.
"Frank," Rocco murmured without raising his volume.
The lead bodyguard stepped out from the rank. "Yes, Don Rocco."
"Strip these four men of their credentials," Rocco commanded. "Escort them to the service gate. If any of them sets foot on Manhattan property after sunset, break their hands."
"Right away, Boss," Frank replied.
The four guards didn't plead; they lowered their heads and surrendered their badges, scurrying toward the side doors like ghosts escaping a tomb.
Rocco knelt once more before Maeve. The little girl was watching him with wide, curious hazel eyes, still holding her paper bakery bag against her cardigan.
"What is your name, sweetheart?" Rocco asked, his rough baritone softening into a tone the club members had never heard in ten years of his reign.
"Maeve," she said, her voice small. "Maeve Vance."
"Vance," Rocco repeated, a faint spark of recognition flashing behind his cold eyes. "Your father is Thomas Vance? The one who runs the bakery on Fourth?"
Maeve nodded, her lower lip trembling again. "Daddy is hurt, mister. Men in dark cars broke his glass yesterday. They said if he didn't give them three thousand dollars today, they would burn our ovens."
The lobby seemed to drop twenty degrees. Rocco’s jaw tightened once, a sharp ripple of muscle shifting beneath his neatly trimmed beard.
He slowly turned his head to look down at Dominic, who was now clutching his knees on the floor, sweating through his silk shirt.
"Extortion, Dominic?" Rocco asked, his voice deathly calm. "On Fourth Street? In the very neighborhood my grandfather settled seventy years ago?"
"Uncle Rocco, it’s commercial development!" Dominic stammered frantically, clawing at Rocco’s trousers. "The land on Fourth is worth forty million! An investment group from Chicago offered us a ten-percent carry if we cleared the zoning parcels! The bakery is eighty years old, it’s a relic, it produces nothing!"
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Rocco didn't kick him away. He simply reached down, took Dominic by his silk necktie, and hoisted the grown man off the floor with one arm.
"That bakery," Rocco whispered directly into Dominic’s ear, "fed my mother when my father was in federal prison. And you brought street thugs to their doorstep?"
