Chapter 4 - The Hunt Begins
The next morning, the financial district of Boston woke up to a massacre, though not a single drop of blood was spilled on the streets.
By 9:00 AM, the Marquetti Hotel Group’s stock had plummeted to zero. Trading was halted. By 10:30 AM, federal regulators seized their domestic assets due to "irregularities" in their offshore accounts—information anonymously leaked from my private servers.
By noon, Celeste Marquetti was standing on the steps of her luxury Beacon Hill townhouse, clutching a single designer suitcase while movers carted away her Italian furniture. Her husband, Julian, sat on the curb, his face buried in his hands, weeping as city marshals padlocked their front door.
I watched from the tinted window of my idling Bentley across the street.
"They're ruined, boss," Victor said from the driver's seat. "Silas has already tried calling them sixteen times. He’s panicking. His laundering pipeline is completely severed."
"Good," I said, rolling up the window. "Let him sweat. Have you located his secondary safehouses?"
"We have. But Silas is smart. He’s gone to ground. He knows we’re onto him. He’s pulled all his personal security from the docks and holed himself up in his estate in Weymouth."
"Let him run. A cornered rat is always the most dangerous, but he's also the easiest to predict. Drive us back to Blackwood."
When I returned to the manor, I found Adriana sitting in the glass-walled sunroom overlooking the ocean. She was wearing a soft cream sweater, a bowl of warm soup sitting untouched on the table in front of her.
"You aren't eating," I said, walking in and sitting opposite her.
She offered a weak smile. "I'm tryng, Damon. It's just... hard to keep anything down. My mind is racing. I keep expecting those men to burst through the door."
"They will never get past my gates, Adriana. I promise you."
She looked at me, her amber eyes searching my face. "Eli used to talk about you all the time. He said you were the fiercest man he’d ever met, but that beneath all the armor, you had a heart of pure gold. I didn't believe him back then. I thought a mob boss couldn't possibly have a soul."
"Eli was too soft for this world," I said softly, looking out at the gray waves. "That’s why I loved him. He was the only decent thing in my life. When he died, a part of me died with him."
"He loved you like a brother, Damon," she said, reaching out to place her hand over mine. Her touch was warm, sending a strange, unfamiliar jolt through my chest. "He wouldn't want you to live in the dark forever."
I looked down at our joined hands. For years, I had known nothing but violence, betrayal, and cold strategy. But in this quiet sunroom, with Eli's widow, I felt a flicker of something I hadn't felt in decades.
Hope.
But before I could speak, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out. It was an encrypted text from an unknown number.
"I have the girl's location, Calas. If you want her and the bastard baby to see tomorrow, come to the Weymouth docks tonight. Alone. Or I'll bring the storm to your front door."
May you like
My grip tightened on the phone until the screen cracked. Silas had bypassed my security protocols. He had found a way to track us.
The game was over. It was time to end this.
