Chapter 2 - The Albany Lie
“Clear the corridor,” Grace said, looking past Alex toward the doorway.
Marco didn’t move. His gaze darted to Alex, waiting for the execution order. He had killed men for less than an insolent glance; seeing a civilian—a secretary—dictate terms to the head of the Vitali family was an intolerable breach of reality.
“Outside,” Alex commanded, never taking his eyes off Grace’s face. “Take the sentries with you. If anyone breathes through their nose too loudly, gut them.”
The heavy walnut doors swung shut, cutting off the rustle of Kevlar and the heavy tread of tactical boots. The latch seated home with a dull, heavy thud.
The silence that followed was suffocating. The scent of cedar smoke from the small hearth mingled with the familiar, maddening trace of Grace’s perfume—bergamot, black pepper, and dry paper.
“Start with the truth,” Alex said. He did not lower his stance. His right hand remained inches from the grip of the custom Kimber .45 concealed beneath his tailored jacket. “Or I will forget that you know how I take my tea.”
Grace walked calmly past him, unbuttoning her coat cuffs, and reached into the inside lining. She withdrew a small, unadorned brass key with three offset teeth and placed it on the dark wood between them. It made a sharp, clean sound.
“I am not their prisoner, Alex,” she said. “And I am not your mole.”
“You are sitting on the high arbitrator’s chair of the Marcone family,” Alex hissed, closing the distance between them until he could see the amber light reflected in the dark rings of her irises. “That seat hasn’t been occupied since Paulie Marcone had his stroke fourteen months ago. That seat belongs to a bloodline that murdered my uncle in ninety-eight. You told HR your background was executive administration in Albany.”
“It was,” she said flatly. “I managed estates. Highly disputed, violently contested estates.”
“Albany,” he repeated, the word dripping with venomous mockery.
“I grew up in the shadow of the Delancey docks, Alex. My father was the private accountant for the old council before they tore themselves apart in the nineties. I spent my childhood watching men like you pretend they were kings while their wives drank themselves to sleep and their children checked the undersides of their cars for mercury switches.” Her voice was devoid of self-pity; it was an autopsy report. “I knew the rules before I knew algebra. And I hated every drop of grease that kept this machine turning.”
“Then why are you here?” He slammed an open palm down onto the table, the report echoing like a gunshot. “Why aren’t you in a glass cube filing tax returns for some midtown dental supply firm?”
“Because Paulie Marcone was my godfather,” Grace said. The words dropped like stones into a deep well. “And when the rot in his brain began eating his memory, the wolves in this basement realized there was no will. No succession plan. Just seven captains with three hundred rifles between them, all waiting for him to stop breathing so they could turn the tri-state area into an abattoir.”
Alex stared at her. His mind pieced together the missing fragments of the last year’s underworld intelligence—the sudden, eerie stall in the Marcone family’s expansion, the frozen bank lines, the phantom orders that contradicted their street bosses.
“He begged me,” she whispered, her gaze drifting toward the high-backed chair. “He knew his captains would execute any successor from within the ranks out of pure spite. They needed a neutral seal. Someone who held the original ledger, the signatures, the deeds to the holding shells—and someone who had zero interest in ruling the kingdom.”
“And you accepted?”
May you like
“I took the ledger. I put it in a safety deposit vault in Zurich. And I told them that the first faction to pull a trigger without my sign-off would find their shell companies drained, their federal warrants unsealed, and their port access revoked.” She turned back to him, her expression chillingly placid. “I’ve been managing their blood-spill on my lunch breaks, Alex.”
---
