Chapter 40 - THE ARCHITECT’S CONFESSION
Victor leaned against the brick boiler wall, his breathing ragged, a twisted grin stretching across his cracked lips.
"You finally figured it out, didn't you, Nicky?" Victor wheezed, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the soot-covered floor. "Arthur’s legitimate daughter didn't die in that Swiss clinic thirty years ago. Arthur had her hidden with Santos. He knew what I would do if I found out he had an heir outside the Caruso syndicate. He knew I’d slit her throat in the nursery."
Nicholas walked over until his shadow loomed over his father. He didn't draw a weapon. His eyes were colder than the Hudson water.
"And Isabella?" Nicholas asked quietly. "Who is she, Victor?"
"A ghost," Victor laughed, a hollow, hacking sound. "An orphan I plucked from the gutters of Naples forty years ago to be Arthur’s shadow. She was supposed to watch him. She was supposed to report every dollar Arthur laundered through the foundation. But she was smarter than both of us. She realized that whichever Caruso survived the bloodletting would be too weak to fight off the feds."
Suddenly, the encrypted satellite phone inside Nicholas’s pocket vibrated.
A sharp, rhythmic buzz that broke the heavy silence of the boiler house.
Nicholas pulled the phone out. The display showed an unlisted alphanumeric sequence—the internal emergency routing of the Caruso estate’s Morning Vault.
Nicholas answered, switching to speakerphone. He didn't say a word.
"Nicholas," Isabella’s voice came through the speaker. It was pristine, completely devoid of fear or adrenaline. In the background, the soft clinking of china against porcelain could be heard—as if she were having tea in the library while tactical teams swarmed the perimeter.
"I see you found Arthur’s railroad tunnel," she said smoothly. "I expected nothing less from my most lethal brother."
"You touched the girl," Nicholas said, his tone flat, devoid of emotion.
"I took what Arthur owed me," Isabella replied without missing a beat. "Thirty-two years of managing ledgers for two psychotic butchers. Victor thought I was his hound. Arthur thought I was his confessor. Neither of them realized that ledgers are written by the survivors."
"Where is Daniel?" Nicholas asked.
A brief pause drifted across the satellite link.
May you like
"Look behind the boiler, Nicholas. In the coal hopper."
***
