Chapter 4 - The Clean Slate
I held Marco captive in the back room for hours. I didn't beat him. I didn't torture him. I did something worse. I pulled up the financial records—the real ones, the ones I had hidden away in a secondary, encrypted drive he didn't know existed.
I showed him the paper trail. I showed him how I had known about his embezzlement for months, how I had been tracking his every move, waiting for him to expose his accomplices.
"You weren't pruning the tree," I said, looking at him with pity. "You were just the weed I needed to pull."
Marco slumped, his arrogance finally stripped away. "What now?"
"Now," I said, "you vanish."
I had the guards escort him to the port, but not to the boats. To the exile. He was a man with no money, no connections, and a name that would be recognized by every rival syndicate from here to Sicily. He would spend his life running, looking over his shoulder, a ghost in the world he tried to conquer.
Sophia emerged from the panic room, Emma clinging to her hand.
I looked at them. The debt file was gone. The threat was erased.
"You’re safe now," I told her.
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"Why did you do it?" she asked.
I looked at my son, Luca, who was standing in the doorway, his eyes wide, witnessing the man I truly was. "Because," I said, "the red crayon was the best one."
