Chapter 8
The bright cinematic light of the suite suddenly felt oppressive, blinding the Hale men to any hope of escape. Giulietta paced slowly in front of them, the heavy silk of her wedding gown whispering against the floorboards. She looked like an angel of death dressed in white.
"If I let you walk out of this room, Warren," Giulietta reasoned aloud, "you will run to the Russians. You will tell them that the Marconi family now controls the ports they desperately need. You will try to buy your lives by offering them a war with me."
"No! I swear to God, no!" Warren cried, falling to his knees on the hardwood floor. The sixty-six-year-old patriarch clasped his hands together in a posture of desperate prayer. "I won't say a word! I'll take Preston to South America! We'll change our names!"
"Get up, Dad! Have some dignity!" Preston shouted, though he remained firmly planted on the sofa, too terrified to stand up himself.
"Dignity?" Giulietta scoffed, looking at Preston with absolute revulsion. "You brought a weapon into a bridal suite to threaten a woman, and you speak of dignity? You are a coward, Preston. A coward who hides behind his father's failing reputation."
"I'm warning you, Giulietta," Preston said, attempting to muster a threatening tone, though his voice shook violently. "If we don't walk down that aisle, people are going to ask questions. The mayor is out there. The governor is out there! You can't just make us disappear!"
"I don't need to make you disappear," Giulietta smiled, a terrifying, brilliant expression. "I just need to make you irrelevant."
She turned to one of the bodyguards standing by the door. "Marco. Bring in the notary."
The capo nodded, opening the heavy door just enough to allow a small, sharply dressed man with a briefcase to slip into the room. The notary looked terrified, his eyes darting from the weeping Warren to the imposing Giulietta. He quickly set a stack of highly dense legal documents on the vanity table.
"What is that?" Warren choked out from the floor.
"Your confession," Giulietta said smoothly. "And your absolute surrender. These documents legally sign over the remaining twenty percent of your private offshore accounts to a charity of my choosing. Furthermore, they contain a signed, sworn confession of your dealings with the Russian syndicate."
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"If we sign that, we go to prison for the rest of our lives!" Preston shrieked.
"If you don't sign it," Giulietta whispered, leaning down so she was eye-to-eye with the cowering fiancé, "you won't live long enough to see a prison cell."
