Chapter 4 - The Rat in the Ranks
The confession did not come easily, but men like Damien Rizzo broke under a very specific kind of pressure.
Alessandro didn't use violence; violence was clumsy, messy, and left too many questions for the cleaning crew. Instead, he used arithmetic. He laid out the timeline of the leak, the exact digital footprint of the wire transfers originating from an offshore account in the Cayman Islands, and the names of three federal prosecutors in Brooklyn who had been quietly assembling a RICO indictment against the Viscari organization for the past eight months.
By 2:00 AM, Damien was broken, weeping softly into his hands across the walnut table while Vincent Marchetti stood guard by the door with a Sig Sauer pistol tucked casually into his belt.
“It wasn't just me,” Damien sobbed, his silk tie crooked and his hair disheveled. “The federal boys... they had leverage, Alessandro. My youngest son, Leo... he got mixed up with some bad lenders in Chicago. Gambling debts. Three hundred thousand dollars. They were going to break his legs, or worse, send him to federal prison on drug distribution charges. The prosecutors came to me at a restaurant in midtown. They said all I had to do was provide copies of the primary tax ledgers from your private vault, and Leo’s slate would be wiped clean.”
“And you decided to sell out fifteen years of loyalty for a sophomore’s poker debts?” Alessandro asked. His voice was completely devoid of anger now. It was hollowed out, cold as a tomb.
“I panicked!” Damien cried out, slamming his fist onto the table. “What was I supposed to do? Let my boy get put away for twenty years? Any man in this room would have done the same thing!”
“No,” Alessandro said quietly. “Any man in this room would have come to me. We take care of our own debts, Damien. That was the first rule my father taught us.”
Damien looked up, his eyes wide with sudden, desperate hope. “Alessandro... please. We go back a long way. Put me on ice, send me to South America, do whatever you want—just don’t...”
Alessandro didn't answer him. He looked over at Vincent Marchetti.
“Take him down to the basement holding room,” Alessandro instructed smoothly. “Keep him secure until dawn. Tomorrow morning, we’re going to have a very interesting conversation with the federal prosecutors handling his case.”
“And the leak?” Vincent asked, his hand resting on his holster.
“Plugged,” Alessandro said.
As Damien was dragged out of the room, kicking and pleading into the empty hallway, the heavy oak doors swung shut behind him, sealing the room in a thick, suffocating silence once again.
Alessandro stood alone by the desk. His eyes drifted down to the silver bracelet resting on the wood.
May you like
He picked it up, turned it over in his hand, and dropped it into his coat pocket.
Then he walked out of the conference room, down the grand staircase, and toward the medical infirmary on the ground floor.
