Chapter 5 - THE DEAD MAN’S TAPE
The fluorescent lights of the vault hummed, casting a sickly yellow glow over the polished steel safety boxes.
Thomas, the man who had drafted Adrian’s will, the man who had eulogized Claire and Sophie at their funeral, stood perfectly still, the barrel of his gun unwavering.
“Don’t do anything foolish, Silas,” Thomas warned, his eyes flicking to the old enforcer. “I don’t want to hurt the child. But I will.”
Adrian didn’t move. His hands remained flat on the table next to Claire’s diary. The burning pain in his legs was escalating, a fiery throbbing that demanded every ounce of his willpower to ignore.
“You’re a lawyer, Thomas,” Adrian said, his voice deadly quiet. “You don’t do wet work. Why are you running errands for Marcus?”
Thomas smiled, a thin, humorless stretching of his lips. “Marcus doesn’t give me orders, Adrian. We’re partners. We have been for a very long time. Now, slide the cassette tape across the table.”
Adrian looked at the black plastic cassette resting in the steel drawer.
“What’s on the tape, Thomas?”
“Insurance,” the lawyer replied. “Claire was a clever woman. She didn’t just find out about Marcus’s daughter. She found the recording that proves why Marcus wants to destroy your family. Slide it over.”
Adrian’s mind raced. He had his gun under his coat, but drawing it from a seated position against a man already aiming at Lily was suicide.
But Adrian felt something he hadn’t felt in three years.
He felt the hard metal of the wheelchair footrest pressing against the soles of his shoes.
His muscles were screaming, but the nerve block was fading fast. He had traction.
“Lily,” Adrian said softly, not taking his eyes off Thomas. “Close your eyes, sweetheart.”
Lily squeezed her eyes shut, clutching her rabbit.
Adrian picked up the cassette tape with his left hand. He slid it slowly across the polished mahogany table.
Thomas tracked the movement, his eyes leaving Adrian’s face for one crucial second to watch the tape.
In that single second, Adrian shoved his hands down on the armrests and pushed himself up.
It was an explosion of agonizing pain. His legs buckled, his knees screaming in protest, but the sheer momentum of his upper body threw him forward. He launched himself across the table, knocking the heavy steel deposit drawer directly into Thomas’s chest.
The heavy metal edge caught the lawyer in the ribs with a sickening crunch.
Thomas gasped, his gun firing wildly into the ceiling—thwip!—showering them in plaster dust.
Before Thomas could recover, Silas was on him. The massive enforcer grabbed the lawyer’s shooting hand, snapping the wrist like dry kindling. Thomas screamed, dropping the weapon as Silas drove a heavy fist into his jaw, sending him crashing to the floor.
Adrian collapsed back into his wheelchair, gasping for air, sweat pouring down his face. His legs were on fire, but a fierce, triumphant light burned in his eyes.
He had moved.
“Boss! You stood up!” Silas breathed, staring in shock as he pinned Thomas to the ground with his knee.
“Get the tape,” Adrian panted, grabbing the edge of the table to steady himself. “And tie him up with his own belt.”
Silas secured the groaning lawyer and retrieved the cassette tape.
There was a small, dusty tape player sitting on a side desk, meant for clients reviewing old audio wills. Silas popped the tape in and pressed play.
A hiss of static filled the vault.
Then, a voice spoke. It was a voice that made Adrian’s blood turn to ice.
It was his father. The old Don Moretti.
“The Rossi boy survived the hit?” his father’s voice rasped on the recording, sounding younger but just as cruel as Adrian remembered.
Another voice answered. It was Thomas, sounding twenty years younger. “Yes, Don Moretti. Marcus Rossi escaped. We killed his father and his brothers, but the boy got away. He changed his name to Vale. He’s working as a low-level earner in the docks.”
“Bring him into the family,” the old Don commanded. “Keep him close. Give him power. Make him think he earned it. When the time is right, I’ll use him to prune my own garden.”
“Prune your garden, sir?”
“My son, Adrian. He’s getting soft. He wants to marry that civilian girl, Claire. He wants to take weekends off. He wants to be a father, not a boss. When Adrian’s weakness becomes a liability, I will give Marcus Vale the green light to take his revenge. Marcus will plant the bomb, thinking he’s avenging the Rossi family. But really, he’ll just be cleaning my house.”
The tape clicked, and the static returned.
Adrian sat frozen in his wheelchair.
The oxygen seemed to vanish from the room.
Marcus hadn’t orchestrated the car bomb out of a secret ambition. Marcus had been manipulated into it.
And the mastermind who had ordered the murder of Adrian’s wife and four-year-old daughter… was Adrian’s own father. The man who sat in a luxury penthouse nursing home overlooking Central Park, pretending to be a frail, retired old man.
A choked sob broke the silence.
Thomas was weeping on the floor, his nose broken. “The old Don knew Marcus would leave Lily alive. He knew Marcus couldn’t kill his own blood. So your father ordered me to hire the arsonist to burn down the orphanage. He wanted no loose ends. He wanted Marcus completely broken and dependent on the syndicate.”
Adrian looked at Lily.
She wasn’t an orphan because of a tragic accident. She was an orphan because of a generational war engineered by Adrian’s own blood.
Suddenly, Silas’s phone buzzed.
Silas looked at the screen, his face draining of color. He held the phone out to Adrian.
It was a text message from Marcus.
I know you left the bank, Adrian. I have your driver’s wife. Come to the old Rossi warehouse on Pier 40. Bring the girl. If you aren’t here in thirty minutes, I start mailing you pieces of her.
Adrian stared at the message.
Marcus didn’t know the truth. Marcus still thought he was enacting his own grand revenge against Adrian.
“Boss,” Silas said, his voice trembling for the first time. “My wife…”
Adrian closed his eyes. The pain in his legs was a raging inferno, but it was nothing compared to the cold, absolute fury crystallizing in his soul.
He opened his eyes.
“Help me up, Silas.”
“Boss, your legs—”
“Help me up!” Adrian roared.
Silas grabbed Adrian under the arms and hauled him to his feet. Adrian screamed through his teeth as his boots hit the floor. His knees wobbled, threatening to snap, but he locked them.
He leaned heavily on the table.
“We are going to Pier 40,” Adrian said, his voice a low, demonic whisper. “But we are not giving him the girl.”
He looked down at Thomas, who was cowering on the floor.
“Leave him,” Adrian said. “He’s a dead man anyway.”
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Adrian took one agonizing step forward. Then another.
He was going to war.
