Chapter 3 - The Threat at the Penthouse Gates
Before I could speak, the intercom mounted on the laundry room wall chimed with three sharp, discordant pulses.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
The voice of Dean Keller, the chief of building security, crackled through the speaker: "Don Alessandro. We have a priority situation in the private residential lobby. Julian Duca has arrived with two private investigators and an emergency court-ordered conservatorship marshal. He claims he has a warrant to search the domestic quarters for an unauthorized squatter."
Alessandro didn't flinch.
He reached out, lifted eight-month-old Mia from the laundry basket, and rested her securely against his broad chest in the crook of his left arm. With his right hand, he took my wrist, his grip warm, firm, and unyielding.
"Pick up the diaper bag, Elena," Alessandro commanded softly. "You are moving to the master suite."
"Mr. Duca, Julian is your cousin—"
"Julian is a dead man who hasn't stopped breathing yet," Alessandro replied with chilling detachment.
We walked through the service corridor into the grand private foyer of the forty-second-floor penthouse.
The double elevator doors slid open with a soft hydraulic chime, revealing four armed security operators from Duca Sovereign Asset Protection standing in a defensive perimeter, flanking Arthur Ross—seventy-four years old, impeccably tailored in a bespoke three-piece charcoal suit, the supreme corporate litigator who had served the Duca dynasty for four decades.
Arthur Ross adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles, his sharp blue eyes taking in the sight of the most feared mafia don in New York holding a baby with a teething ring.
"Arthur," Alessandro said, his voice flat and authoritative.
"I have the unsealed Port Authority ledgers, Alessandro," Arthur reported, holding up a heavy, red-tabbed leather portfolio. "The vehicle that struck David Vance in Brooklyn was a black Cadillac Escalade registered to Apex Marine Holdings LLC—an offshore shell company chartered in Delaware under Julian Duca’s sole personal signature."
"And the court marshal downstairs?" Alessandro asked.
"Julian obtained an ex-parte commercial trespass order from a corrupt municipal magistrate in Queens twenty minutes ago," Arthur answered with cold disgust. "He tracked Elena’s name through her terminated apartment lease. He knows she survived, and he knows she has David's personal field diaries containing the missing routing tokens."
Alessandro looked down at Mia, who was now babbling happily, reaching her small hands toward Arthur’s gold watch chain.
May you like
"Bring Julian up," Alessandro ordered.
Arthur smiled—a thin, predatory smile that belonged to an apex predator. "With pleasure, Don Alessandro."
