Chapter 5 - CheckmateThe study was dark, smelling of aged leather, pipe tobacco, and impending doom. Sophia flicked on a small pen-light, sweeping the beam across the room until it landed on a massive sixteenth-century oil painting of a Venetian harbor hanging above a marble fireplace.
She stepped up to the painting, pressing her fingers against the hidden pressure latch on the gilded frame. With a soft mechanical hiss, the painting swung outward on hydraulic hinges, revealing a heavy steel wall safe.
“I’m at the safe,” Sophia reported.
“Override code should be Valenti’s daughter’s birthday,” Julian’s voice came back, typing furiously on his end. “Try 04-12-78.”
Sophia punched the numbers into the digital pad.
Bzzzt. Red light. Incorrect.
“That didn’t work,” Sophia said, her heart rate ticking upward as she heard muffled voices approaching down the hallway. Someone was trying the outer door handle.
“Hold on, hold on,” Julian urged. “Valenti is narcissistic. Try the date he took over the Brooklyn docks—10-15-94.”
Sophia rapidly keyed in the new sequence.
Click.
The green light flashed. The heavy steel wheel spun freely. Sophia pulled the heavy door open, revealing stacks of bearer bonds, diamond pouches, and a thick leather-bound ledger labeled COMMISSION MASTER LEDGER - CONFIDENTIAL.
“I have it,” Sophia whispered triumphantly, lifting the ledger out of the safe.
Suddenly, the heavy oak study door burst open behind her.
“What the hell are you doing?!” a harsh voice bellowed.
Sophia spun around. Standing in the doorway was Don Valenti himself—a short, barrel-chested old man with silver hair and cold, dead eyes, flanked by two armed thugs.
Valenti’s gaze dropped from Sophia’s face down to the heavy leather ledger clutched in her hands. His face contorted into a mask of pure, murderous rage.
“Kill her,” Valenti snarled.
The two thugs raised their firearms. But before their fingers could squeeze the triggers, the windows behind Valenti exploded inward in a shower of shattering glass and blinding smoke grenades.
Flash! Bang!
Before the guards could recover their vision, a dark shadow dropped through the shattered window frame, landing with lethal grace directly behind Valenti.
It was Julian Blackwood.
Before Valenti could turn, Julian had him locked in a chokehold, his own silver-plated pistol pressed firmly beneath the old mob boss’s chin.
“Drop your weapons,” Julian commanded, his voice echoing through the penthouse like the crack of doom. “Drop them, or I scatter the Don’t brains across his own expensive rug.”
The two thugs froze, looking helplessly at their paralyzed boss. Slowly, their weapons clattered to the marble floor.
Sophia walked past them, clutching the ledger to her chest, her emerald gown catching the flashing red and blue lights of police sirens beginning to wail down on Fifth Avenue.
“You’re too late, Blackwood!” Valenti choked out beneath Julian’s arm. “The FBI... the entire federal task force already has copies of everything! You can’t stop the Commission!”
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Julian smiled, a cold, blindingly brilliant flash of teeth in the smoke-filled room.
“We aren’t stopping the Commission, Valenti,” Julian whispered softly into the old man’s ear. “We’re replacing it.”
