Chapter 11 - The Purge of the Serpents Within
The iron doors of St. Michael’s crypt groaned shut behind me,
sealing the ancient subterranean chill away from the damp night air.
The rain had finally died down to a sluggish mist,
clinging to the blackened cobblestones of the churchyard like grease.
At the foot of the stone steps,
standing beside the rear bumper of his armored sedan,
Salvatore Varga was furiously dialing a burner phone.
His tailored cashmere coat hung crooked on his shoulders,
his hands shaking so violently that the screen slipped twice against his leather gloves.
He had bolted from the granite table the moment Moretti tapped his cane,
desperate to warn his cousin in Long Island City,
desperate to scrub the Russian wire transfers from his accounts before sunrise.
I did not run after him.
I did not draw a weapon.
I walked slowly down the stone pathway,
my hands resting comfortably in the pockets of my navy trousers,
my footsteps muffled by the decaying autumn leaves.
Marco stood twenty paces away,
leaning against the iron gate of the cemetery,
his trench coat buttoned to the collar,
his fingers casually tapping against the wooden grip of a concealed shotgun.
When Varga heard my leather soles crunch upon the wet gravel,
his breath caught in his throat,
and his thumb froze over the keypad.
He slowly turned around,
his face bathed in the sickly yellow glow of the streetlamp overhead.
“Dominic,”
Varga stammered,
forcing a hollow,
nervous grin that exposed his gold molar.
“I was...
I was just trying to reach my driver.
The traffic on the bridge is going to be terrible tonight.”
I stopped three paces from him,
my shadow stretching across the hood of his black Lincoln.
“Your driver is asleep in the front seat,
Salvatore,”
I said softly,
my voice as steady as the church foundation.
“And he will not be waking up until tomorrow afternoon.”
Varga’s eyes darted toward the tinted glass of his sedan.
Through the moisture on the window,
the silhouette of his bodyguard sat slumped against the steering wheel,
unconscious from the chloroform Santino had administered three minutes ago.
The burner phone slipped from Varga’s fingers,
landing with a dull plastic clatter on the wet stones between our feet.
“Listen to me,
Dominic,”
Varga pleaded,
his voice rising in panic,
his chest heaving beneath his soaked wool coat.
“The three hundred thousand...
it wasn't a betrayal!
Kolov came to my people with federal transport manifests!
He told me the Department of Justice was building an indictment against you!
He said you were sinking,
and that if I didn't open the Long Island City piers,
the FBI would seize my family’s warehouses as co-conspirators!”
I tilted my head slightly,
watching him grovel with cold detachment.
“You took silver from a man who beat a woman in my house,”
I said,
each syllable falling with the weight of an iron anvil.
“You sat at my father’s table on Christmas Eve.
You drank our wine.
You watched Lucia grow up from a child in braids to a woman.
And the first time a Russian hyena barked outside your fence,
you sold our southern flank for thirty pieces of coin.”
“I didn't know about the girl!”
Varga screamed,
tears of pure dread welling in the corners of his bloodshot eyes.
“I swear on the Holy Mother,
Dominic!
I didn't know Kolov would touch anyone!
I thought it was just business!
Take the piers!
Take my trucking routes in Queens!
Take five million dollars from my personal vault in Jersey!
Just let me get on a plane to Naples!”
I reached into my breast pocket,
retrieving a fountain pen and a single,
folded sheet of cream-colored stationery.
I extended them toward him.
“Naples is far too beautiful for a traitor,”
I murmured.
“This is a deed of transfer.
It signs over all your commercial real estate,
your docking permits,
and your shell corporations in the Bahamas to the Castellano Trust.
Every cent you stole,
every bribe you collected,
will be placed into an endowment fund.”
Varga blinked,
staring at the paper as if it were a reprieve from the electric chair.
“An endowment?”
he whispered,
snatching the pen with trembling fingers.
“For what?”
“For the reconstructive surgery,
physical rehabilitation,
and lifelong comfort of Emma Carter,”
I replied.
“You are going to buy her family a home.
You are going to pay for every drop of blood your cowardice allowed to spill.”
Varga dropped to his knees right there on the wet cobblestones,
using the hood of his sedan as a desk,
scribbling his signature across the bottom of the parchment with desperate speed.
When he finished,
he thrust the paper and pen back toward me,
looking up like a stray dog begging for a scrap of meat.
“It’s done,”
Varga gasped,
wiping sweat and rain from his forehead.
“It’s signed,
Dominic.
I gave you everything.
Now...
can I go?”
I folded the parchment neatly,
tucking it back into my suit pocket.
Then I looked over Varga’s shoulder toward the darkness of the church cemetery.
“You gave Emma her restitution,
Salvatore,”
I said quietly.
“That was for her.”
Varga’s breath hitched,
the blood draining from his lips as he realized the trap.
“And...
and what about you?”
he choked out.
“I am a Castellano,”
I whispered,
stepping back into the mist.
“And I do not negotiate with snakes.”
Santino stepped out from the shadows behind the headstones,
a silenced automatic pistol gripped firmly in his gloved right hand.
Before Varga could utter a single scream,
two muffled coughs echoed beneath the stone arches of the cathedral,
and the night was silent once again.
I did not turn back to look at the body.
I climbed into the passenger seat of Marco’s car,
rolling down the window to let the clean night air wash away the stench of treachery.
“Tell the crews to seize the Long Island City terminals immediately,”
I commanded.
May you like
“By tomorrow morning,
I want every Russian flag in Queens pulled down and burned in the street.”
