Chapter 2 - THE MAN WHO SOLD THEIR ROUTE
Niko Bellini lasted eighteen minutes before admitting he knew where Elena and Mia had been taken.
He lasted another seven before admitting he had helped put them there.
I stood on the opposite side of the warehouse office and looked at the man who had eaten at my table for eleven years.
Niko had been twenty-one when my father brought him into the family.
I had paid for his mother’s surgery.
I had kept his younger brother out of prison.
I had trusted him enough to place him on internal security rotations.
Now he sat in a wooden chair with both hands restrained in front of him, rain dripping from his hair, while Marco stood near the door.
“Niko.”
He looked at the floor.
“Look at me.”
He did.
His left eye was already swelling.
Not from me.
Marco had found him attempting to leave Queens with eighty thousand dollars in cash and a passport issued under another name.
“What did you give Colombo?”
Niko swallowed.
“Nothing important.”
Marco laughed once.
I did not.
“The nursery route.”
Niko’s face changed.
That was answer enough.
I walked closer.
“You gave him Elena’s schedule.”
“No.”
“Mia’s pickup time?”
“No.”
“The taxi company?”
“I swear—”
I placed Miss Rose on the table.
The doll’s faded face pointed toward him.
Niko stopped talking.
“This was in the gutter outside Little Meadows.”
His eyes dropped.
“Mia was holding it when the men took her.”
“I didn’t know they were going to take the kid.”
My hand closed around the edge of the table.
Marco shifted slightly.
He knew me well enough to recognize the moment before I stopped thinking.
I forced my fingers open.
“What did you think they were going to do?”
Niko’s voice cracked.
“Grab Elena.”
“For what?”
“To make you come to the table.”
I stared at him.
“And a three-year-old happened to be standing there?”
“I told Vincent no children.”
I almost smiled.
The stupidity of that sentence was breathtaking.
“You gave a kidnapping crew the route of a mother leaving nursery school.”
“I thought they’d wait.”
“For when?”
Niko said nothing.
I leaned down.
“You thought men who threaten families would respect your instructions.”
“I needed money.”
“There it is.”
He closed his eyes.
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
Marco swore.
I straightened.
“You sold Elena for two hundred thousand dollars.”
“No.”
Niko’s face twisted.
“I sold information.”
“That distinction comforts you?”
He said nothing.
I walked toward the window.
Rain streaked the glass.
Red Hook sat somewhere beyond the river.
Warehouses.
Shipping yards.
Containers stacked like steel graves.
Colombo territory had been shrinking for three years.
Vincent knew he could not beat me directly.
So he found something I could not treat like inventory.
A woman.
A child.
“Who approached you?”
Niko hesitated.
“Vincent’s people.”
“No.”
I turned.
“You don’t betray a family you’ve served eleven years because a Colombo soldier offers money.”
His breathing changed.
Marco noticed too.
“There was someone else,” I said.
“No.”
“Inside.”
Niko shook his head.
“Niko.”
“I can’t.”
That phrase mattered.
Not I won’t.
I can’t.
“Why?”
His eyes filled.
“They’ll kill my brother.”
“Who?”
Silence.
I stepped closer.
“Who, Niko?”
He looked at Marco.
Then at me.
“Your uncle.”
The room went completely still.
Marco whispered, “Which one?”
Niko laughed weakly.
There were three living Moretti uncles.
Only one mattered.
“Vittorio.”
My father’s younger brother.
The man who had taught me to shoot at thirteen.
The man who stood beside me when my father died.
The man who had spent twenty years telling me blood was the only loyalty that survived money.
I looked at Niko.
“Explain.”
“He said Elena was changing you.”
I almost laughed.
That sounded exactly like Vittorio.
“He said you were making decisions with feelings instead of structure. That the Colombo deal would remind you what happens when a boss becomes sentimental.”
Marco’s jaw tightened.
“What deal?”
Niko stared at the floor.
I answered for him.
“A controlled kidnapping.”
He nodded.
My stomach turned.
Vittorio had intended Elena to be taken.
Not Mia.
Maybe that mattered to him.
It did not matter to me.
“What was supposed to happen?”
Niko spoke quickly now.
“Vincent would hold Elena. Demand Red Hook access. You would refuse. Vittorio would negotiate privately, get her released, make Colombo owe him.”
Marco stared.
“He wanted to look like the man who saved Dominic from his own weakness.”
Niko nodded.
“And afterward?”
“He said Elena would have to go.”
My vision narrowed.
“Go where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Niko.”
“I don’t!”
His voice broke.
“He said you would understand eventually.”
I stepped away before I did something irreversible.
Mia’s little doll lay on the table.
One button eye.
Mud in the stitching.
Three months earlier, she had carried it into my office during a meeting.
I had looked at Elena and said, “Why is your daughter in here?”
Before Elena could answer, Mia climbed onto the sofa.
“Miss Rose has business.”
Five grown men had stared at her.
I had stared longest.
Then Mia placed the doll upright beside her.
“Talk.”
Marco had laughed so hard he had to leave the room.
I remembered Elena standing in the doorway, mortified.
I remembered pretending I was annoyed.
I remembered moving the next meeting because Mia had fallen asleep on the sofa.
And now Vittorio believed she was collateral damage in a lesson.
“What does Colombo know about my security?”
Niko looked up.
“Enough.”
“How?”
“Vittorio gave them old access maps.”
Marco swore.
“Old maps still show the service tunnels.”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“Shipping schedules. The Red Hook warehouses. Guard rotations at Elena’s apartment.”
I turned.
“You knew I had security on her building.”
Niko nodded.
“Vittorio called it proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“That she mattered.”
I looked down at Miss Rose.
She did.
That was no longer something I could deny.
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number again.
Marco looked at me.
I answered.
Vincent Colombo’s distorted voice came through.
“Thirty-nine hours.”
I said nothing.
“You found Bellini?”
Again, silence.
Vincent laughed.
“Of course you did.”
A child cried faintly in the background.
My blood stopped.
“Mia.”
The crying stopped.
Then I heard her voice.
Small.
Terrified.
“Dominic?”
Every man in the room went still.
I closed my eyes.
“I’m here, piccola.”
“Miss Rose is gone.”
“I have her.”
A little gasp.
“You found her?”
“Yes.”
“Is Mama there?”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“Where is your mother?”
A man took the phone away.
Vincent’s voice returned.
“She’s alive.”
“If you hurt either of them—”
“You know, Moretti, I always wondered what your voice would sound like when you were afraid.”
I looked at Niko.
Then Marco.
Then the locked office door beyond which twenty Moretti soldiers waited for instructions.
Vincent continued.
“Red Hook. Forty-eight hours became thirty-nine. Keep digging inside your family and I make it thirty.”
The call ended.
Marco stepped closer.
“What now?”
I looked at Niko.
“How many of Vittorio’s men know?”
“Enough to fight.”
That meant twenty.
Maybe thirty.
Men loyal to a Moretti by blood.
A direct arrest would split the organization.
Marco understood.
“You move on Vittorio tonight, we could have a civil war before sunrise.”
“I know.”
“And Colombo’s waiting for exactly that.”
“I know.”
Marco lowered his voice.
“So what order are you giving?”
I picked up Miss Rose.
Then I looked at Niko.
“Lock every Moretti account Vittorio can access.”
Marco stared.
“That tells him we know.”
“Good.”
“Dominic—”
“Strip his captains of command. Seize the armories. Put loyal men on every bridge, warehouse and safe house from Queens to Brooklyn.”
Marco’s expression hardened.
“And Vittorio?”
“Bring him to the old family house.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
Marco turned toward the door.
I stopped him.
“One more thing.”
He looked back.
“Anyone who raises a gun in Vittorio’s name gets one chance to put it down.”
“And if they don’t?”
I looked toward the rain.
“Then tonight they learn the difference between loyalty to my family…”
I slipped Mia’s soaked rag doll inside my coat.
“…and loyalty to my name.”
Marco opened the door.
Men stood waiting.
I gave the order that every Moretti had been taught never to give against blood.
“Take my uncle.”
And somewhere across New York, phones began ringing.
Doors began locking.
Weapons came out of safes.
Men chose sides.
Vincent Colombo had kidnapped Elena and Mia to force me into surrender.
Instead, he had exposed the one weakness more dangerous than love.
May you like
Betrayal.
And by midnight, the Moretti family was at war with itself.
