Chapter 9 - The Last Will and Testament
"Who is this?"
Carmine’s voice over the speakerphone was cracked, high-pitched with a panic he was desperately trying to hide behind his usual arrogance. In the background, Dominic could hear the shouting of his men, the useless clattering of emergency flashlights, and the cold, mechanical alarm of the facility's disabled security grid.
"Carmine," Dominic said, his voice as calm and steady as the stone foundation of his brownstone. "You always did have a terrible eye for logistics."
A long, suffocating silence stretched over the airwaves.
"Dominic?" Carmine whispered, his voice suddenly sounding very small, very thin. "How... how are you here? You're in a chair. You're finished. The captains signed with me."
"The captains signed with a ghost, Carmine," Dominic said. "And ghosts don't pay the rent. Right now, your eight-million-dollar cargo is locked behind six tons of dead steel. Your guards are currently running through the marsh in their underwear. And I am sitting at your gate in a vehicle that can withstand a landmine."
"You can't do this, Dom," Carmine snarled, though the desperation was leaking through every word. "We're family. We're Russo blood. You think the council is going to let you burn down the city because of a little dispute?"
"The council didn't show up to my birthday, Carmine," Dominic said quietly. "Which means they don't get a vote in my funeral plans."
He looked back at Nora. She was watching him, her face completely still, her hand resting on her son's sleeping head. She wasn't horrified. She wasn't begging him for mercy. She was simply witnessing the exact moment a king took back his crown.
"What do you want, Dom?" Carmine asked, his voice breaking. "Name the price. We split the docks. Fifty-fifty. Just let the trucks out."
"I don't split with thieves, Carmine," Dominic said. "And I don't negotiate with men who hang my friends from cranes."
He looked at Tony, then at Marcus.
"Tony, give me the matches."
Tony reached into the glove box and pulled out a small, red emergency flare. He struck it against the side of the door, its brilliant, crimson light illuminating the interior of the Suburban with a harsh, demonic glow.
Dominic took the flare in his large hand. He looked out into the snowy night, toward the blacked-out warehouse where his cousin was trapped in the dark.
"I'll give you five minutes to walk out of that building with your hands on your head, Carmine," Dominic said into the phone. "If you aren't at my bumper by the time this flare burns out, I'm going to have Marcus drive this truck through your loading docks and let the diesel fuel do the rest."
He dropped the phone onto the console.
"Nora," Dominic said, his voice returning to that quiet, normal tone he had used when he ate her cake in the dark.
"Yeah, Dominic?" she asked, her green eyes reflecting the crimson glow of the flare.
"When we get back to the brownstone," he said, the corner of his mouth twitching into a real, genuine smile, "I think I’d like another piece of that chocolate cake. The sixty-five-dollar one."
Nora looked at the burning red light in his hand, then out at the dark, ruined kingdom he had just conquered from his seat.
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"It's seventy-five dollars now, Russo," she said, her voice dry as gravel. "We're charging a delivery fee for the snow."
Dominic let out a laugh—the loudest, clearest sound he had made in four months—as the red light of his victory burned bright against the freezing winter dark.
