Chapter 4
Evelyn Hale groaned beneath the fallen gift-finishing station, pushing aside stacks of crushed decorative shopping bags and tangled ribbons. Her diamond earrings were tangled in her graying hair, a vivid purple handprint swelling across her cheek.
"Massimo Caradonna, you barbarian!" Evelyn shrieked, her voice shaking with shrill, aristocratic venom as she struggled to her knees. "My late husband was an elder of the Commission! My family controls the transport unions from Manhattan to White Plains! You strike me? In front of thirty witnesses?"
Massimo did not raise his voice. He reached into his trouser pocket, retrieved an encrypted satellite smartphone, and tapped the screen twice. He placed it against his ear.
"Dante," Massimo commanded quietly.
"Yes, Don Massimo," a raspy voice replied through the speaker, audible in the dead silence of the room.
"Freeze every commercial account under the Hale Logistics umbrella," Massimo said, his pauses slow, rhythmic, and absolute. "Revoke their fuel permits at the Red Hook terminal. Call the port authority commissioner and tell him the Hale family's maritime leasing contracts are null and void due to gross financial breach."
Evelyn froze on the floor, her breath hitching in her throat. "What?! You can't do that! That requires a ninety-day board review!"
"I am the board, Evelyn," Massimo replied, lowering the phone and slipping it back into his pocket.
He walked over to where his daughter sat. He knelt before her, his expensive three-piece suit resting lightly on the marble. With infinite care, Massimo reached out and took Isabella’s left hand. He pushed the emerald silk sleeve up to her elbow, exposing the full extent of the horror.
Around her wrist were deep, ligature-like abrasions. Across her forearm were three distinct, circular burns—marks that made the capos standing along the wall inhale sharply through their teeth.
"Cigars, Isabella?" Massimo asked, his voice so quiet it sounded like a prayer, though the veins in his neck were pulsing with volcanic fury.
Isabella looked away, tears dripping from her chin onto the emerald fabric of her lap. "Two weeks ago. When the shipment from Antwerp was delayed. He came home from the club... he said it was my fault because my cousins wouldn't expedite the customs stamps."
"And Evelyn?" Massimo asked. "What did his mother do?"
"She held Noah in the nursery," Isabella choked out, her body trembling with remembered terror. "She turned the music up so the staff wouldn't hear me screaming. She told me... she told me that a good wife absorbs her husband's frustrations so he can be a strong man."
A low, guttural murmur rippled through the assembled Caradonna capos. Men who had spent thirty years killing rivals on the docks were staring at Evelyn Hale with pure, unmitigated hatred. In the Caradonna organization, violence was a tool of commerce and war; abusing a mother and child was an unforgivable sickness.
Massimo stood up. His movements were terrifyingly smooth.
He turned toward Grant, who was attempting to crawl backward toward the emergency exit behind the counter.
"Franco. Marco," Massimo commanded softly.
May you like
"Boss," two six-foot-three enforcers stepped forward.
"Pick him up," Massimo said. "Take him to the private vault in the basement. It's time for Grant to learn how we finish our business."
