Chapter 4
When Hector descended back into the lower levels, he did not return directly to the banquet hall. Instead, he took the back stairs down to the subterranean wine cellar beneath the kitchens—a stone-walled cavern where the family had conducted its most private business for half a century.
Two guards dragged Odette down the stone steps. Her evening gown was torn at the hem, her diamond earrings tangled in her disheveled hair, her mascara smeared across her pale face like greasepaint. They threw her into a heavy wooden chair beneath a single hanging incandescent bulb.
Hector entered the room slowly, removing his dark overcoat and draping it over a rack of vintage Bordeaux. He rolled up his French cuffs, exposing forearms corded with muscle and old, faded scars.
"You thought you were clever, Odette," Hector began, his voice dangerously even as he pulled a wooden stool across the gravel floor and sat down directly across from her.
Odette flinched at the screech of wood against stone. She looked up through matted hair, her breath hitching in ragged gasps. "Hector... please... Julian said you were losing your mind. He said you were going to name the girl as the sole heir to the shipping terminals! He said you were pushing the family out!"
"The terminals belong to me," Hector said calmly. "I built them while Julian was still snorting his allowance through rolled hundred-dollar bills in Miami. Maiselle is my daughter. Everything I own belongs to her."
"She’s three years old!" Odette screamed, despair turning into bitter venom. "She’s a child! What does she know about the syndicate? What does she know about the unions, the bribes, the ports? You were going to leave all of us with nothing! I gave you four years of my life, Hector! Four years of playing the pretty, smiling hostess, and you never even put my name on the estate deed!"
Hector stared at her with dead, unblinking eyes. "So you decided to murder me in front of seventy people."
"Julian said it was the only way," she sobbed, shrinking back under his gaze. "He said the poison would take effect after you went to bed. He said you'd die in your sleep from heart failure. We were supposed to find you in the morning. He said... he said we'd send the girl away quietly. To a private boarding school in Switzerland. Nobody was supposed to get hurt!"
"You put her dinner in a suitcase, Odette," Hector said, his tone chillingly soft. "You looked a three-year-old in the face and told her she was going to an orphanage. That wasn't Julian's plan. That was your own spite."
Odette lowered her head, trembling violently, unable to meet his eyes.
"Who else is in on it?" Hector demanded.
"No one! Just Julian!"
Hector reached out, his hand moving with blinding speed, catching her by the throat. He didn't choke her, but his fingers pressed into her carotid artery with enough pressure to remind her how fragile her heartbeat truly was.
"Do not lie to me in this cellar, Odette," Hector whispered, his face inches from hers. "Julian doesn't have the stomach to coordinate a coup alone. He’s a coward who hires out his dirty work. Who supplied the cyanide? Who killed the power in the south wing five minutes ago?"
Odette’s eyes bulged with terror. Her hands clawed weakly at his wrist, but his grip was like cast iron.
"The... the Italians," she gasped out, fighting for air. "Don Carmine's people from the south side. Julian made a deal with them yesterday. They... they're outside right now, Hector. They're waiting for the signal!"
Hector released her. She fell forward, coughing violently, gasping for breath.
"What signal?" Hector asked, pulling a clean handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiping his fingers.
Odette looked up, her face twisted in hopeless misery. "The fire alarm. Julian was supposed to pull the fire alarm in the pantry once you drank the glass. That was the signal that you were incapacitated and the house was open."
Hector checked his steel wristwatch. "It’s been twenty minutes since I was supposed to be dead. Julian is sitting upstairs right now, sweating through his three-thousand-dollar suit, wondering why the cavalry hasn't stormed the gates."
Hector walked over to the rack, retrieved his overcoat, and slipped it back on.
"Hector!" Odette cried out, scrambling on her knees across the gravel toward his polished shoes. "What are you going to do to me? Please! I'll leave the country! I'll never come back! Just let me take my sister and go!"
Hector looked down at her from his full height, his expression completely blank.
May you like
"Your sister is already in an apartment in Queens with two of my men outside her door," Hector said quietly. "Whether she continues to draw breath depends entirely on what happens in the next ten minutes. Stay on your knees, Odette. Pray that Julian shoots better than he schemes."
He turned and walked toward the heavy cellar door, shouting to the guards outside without looking back: "Lock her in the vault. Let’s go have a conversation with my cousin."
