Chapter 8 - The Price of Treason
Liam looked up at the red dots painting his skin, then at Gabriel, then back at me. His knees buckled under the sheer weight of his own insignificance.
The revolver slipped from his numb fingers, clattering uselessly against the concrete.
Marco stepped out from the gloom, kicked the gun away, and forced Liam down onto his knees with a brutal hand on his shoulder. Liam sobbed, pressing his forehead against the cold floor.
"Please... please don't kill me," Liam wept, tears and snot smearing across his face. "Chloe, please! Tell him! We loved each other! You can't let him murder me in cold blood!"
Gabriel walked past Liam without even glancing down at him. He stopped in front of me, his hands reaching out to check my coat, ensuring not a single hair was out of place.
"Are you all right?" Gabriel asked, his voice low, intimate, shutting out the rest of the world.
"I'm fine," I said softly, looking up into his eyes. "I knew you were here."
Gabriel turned slowly toward the trembling wreck on the floor. He crouched down until he was eye level with Liam.
"I don't murder men like you, Liam," Gabriel said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "Murdering you would give you an escape. It would make you a tragic headline for one afternoon."
Gabriel reached into his pocket and pulled out a digital recording device.
"This entire warehouse was wired for sound and visual recording the moment you stepped inside. Your extortion attempt, your illegal possession of an unregistered firearm, your violation of federal bail, and your confession to corporate sabotage have just been transmitted directly to the United States Attorney’s Office."
Liam gasped, looking up with hollow, dead eyes. "No..."
"You are going to ADX Florence," Gabriel whispered, the words like nails sealing a coffin. "A maximum-security federal facility where you will spend twenty-three hours a day in an eight-by-ten concrete box. You will never see Manhattan again. You will never see Vanessa Harrington. And you will never, as long as you draw breath on this earth, speak my wife's name."
Gabriel stood up and turned his back on him.
"Marco. Hand him over to the federal marshals waiting outside the perimeter. Let them do their jobs."
"Yes, Mr. Rossi."
May you like
As Marco dragged Liam away, kicking and screaming into the waiting sirens of the law, I felt an extraordinary weight lift from my shoulders. The ghost that had haunted my twenties, the architect of my shame and misery, was gone forever.
***
