Chapter 3 - The Sanctuary and the Viper
By four o'clock in the morning, the heavy clouds began to break over Brooklyn.
A faint, sickly grey light touched the brownstone facades of Crown Heights.
Marco had executed my orders with surgical precision.
The two spotters Kolov had left in the black SUV never even had the chance to draw their weapons.
Marco’s men had boxed them in at the curb, shattered their driver-side windows with steel batons, and dragged them into the wet gutter.
By the time the sun fully rose, those two men were chained in the soundproof basement of our Red Hook warehouse.
Meanwhile, a private medical van had transported Sarah Carter and young Leo directly into my Manhattan estate.
I stood in the doorway of the second-floor guest suite watching them settle in.
The room was larger than the entire ground floor of their tenement apartment.
Sarah Carter lay propped up against silk pillows, an oxygen tube resting beneath her pale, gaunt nose.
Her skin possessed that translucent, fragile quality that only prolonged chemotherapy creates.
Beside her bed sat Leo in a battered wheelchair with worn rubber tires.
His trouser legs were pinned neatly beneath the stumps of his knees.
His youthful face was tight with a mixture of terror, confusion, and defensive rage.
He clutched an aluminum baseball bat across his lap like a soldier guarding a trench.
“Who the hell are you?” Leo demanded, his voice cracking as I stepped into the room.
“Where is Emma?”
“Why did your men drag us out of our beds in the middle of the night?”
Marco stepped forward to reprimand the boy for his insolence, but I raised a single hand to stop him.
I walked slowly across the Persian carpet and stood three feet from the boy’s chair.
I did not look down at his missing limbs.
I looked him directly in his defiant brown eyes.
“My name is Dominic Castellano, Leo,” I said quietly.
“Your sister works in my house.”
The boy’s grip on the aluminum bat tightened until his knuckles turned white.
“Emma is a housekeeper,” Leo spat, though his lower lip trembled.
“She doesn't know people who drive armored trucks with tinted glass.”
“What did you do to her?”
“Where is she?”
Sarah Carter reached out a trembling, veined hand from the bed, touching her son’s shoulder.
“Leo, hush,” she whispered weakly.
“Look at the man’s eyes.”
“He didn't hurt her.”
The mother’s instinct was sharper than the boy’s anger.
She turned her tired, sunken gaze toward me.
“Where is my daughter, Mr. Castellano?”
“Emma was attacked four blocks from my gates last night, Mrs. Carter,” I answered with total honesty.
There was no point in softening the blow with comforting lies.
“Two men ambushed her because she was wearing the uniform of my household.”
“They wanted to send me a message through her suffering.”
Leo let out a strangled, furious cry and tried to push himself up from the wheelchair.
His arms shook violently against the armrests before he collapsed back into the leather seat.
Tears of helpless humiliation spilled down his youthful cheeks.
“I should have been with her!” the boy roared, slamming his fist against his deadened thighs.
“I should have been walking her home from the subway!”
“I’m the man of the house, and I can't even stand up to protect my sister!”
The sound of his raw grief filled the luxurious room.
It was the agony of a young man stripped of his pride by cruel circumstance.
I stepped forward, bypassed the baseball bat, and placed both of my hands firmly on Leo’s shoulders.
The boy froze under the weight of my grip.
“Listen to me very carefully, Leo,” I said, keeping my voice low and steady.
“Your sister took those blows so you wouldn't have to.”
“She walked through the rain every single night so your mother could receive her medicine.”
“She is currently in the best private hospital in this state.”
“The doctors have repaired the damage, and she is sleeping without pain.”
“She did her job.”
“Now you are going to do yours.”
Leo blinked through his tears, looking up at me in disbelief.
“What job?” he whispered.
“You are going to sit in this room, you are going to eat the food my staff prepares, and you are going to let my sister Lucia look after your mother.”
“You are going to survive.”
“That is the only thing Emma cares about.”
“And the men who hurt her?” Leo asked, his voice shaking with venom.
“What about them?”
I straightened my posture and smoothed the front of my jacket.
“That is my job,” I replied.
At eight in the morning, a black courier package arrived at the front security gate of my estate.
The gate guard ran it through the chemical and explosive scanner before delivering it to my desk.
Inside the heavy cardboard box was a velvet jewelry pouch tied with a cheap funeral ribbon.
I untied the knot and spilled the contents onto the desk.
It was Emma’s broken silver wristwatch and her shattered smartphone.
The screen of the phone was smeared with dried blood that matched the sample from my foyer.
Tucked beneath the cracked glass was a small handwritten note on heavy cardstock.
The next time I knock on your door, Castellano, it won't be a maid who bleeds.
Sign over the Red Hook manifests by midnight, or your sister will be the one riding in Harrison's ambulance.
— V. Kolov.
Marco stood behind my chair, reading the words over my shoulder.
His breathing turned shallow and heavy.
“He’s threatening Miss Lucia now,” Marco growled.
“The man has lost his mind.”
“He hasn't lost his mind, Marco,” I said, picking up the small silver watch.
The cheap metal bracelet was bent out of shape.
The second hand was frozen at eleven forty-two.
The exact moment Emma had been beaten into the asphalt.
“Kolov is running out of time,” I explained coldly.
“The federal investigators are closing in on his front companies in Jersey.”
“He needs my clean shipping lines within forty-eight hours, or his entire Russian syndicate will collapse into bankruptcy.”
“He is desperate.”
“And a desperate predator always makes the fatal mistake of overplaying his hand.”
I stood up and slid Emma’s broken watch into my vest pocket.
“Where is Valentin Drake sleeping this morning?” I asked.
Valentin Drake was the enforcer Emma had described.
The man with the black serpent coiled around his wrist.
Kolov’s primary butcher in the five boroughs.
“He runs an underground gambling joint behind an auto-body shop in Long Island City,” Marco answered without hesitation.
“He usually counts the weekend rake around ten in the morning.”
“Get the cars ready,” I said, walking toward the private elevator.
“Just you and me, Marco.”
“Boss?” Marco looked at me with genuine surprise.
“We should take a tactical squad.”
“Valentin keeps at least a dozen armed thugs in that garage.”
I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the underground motor pool.
“If I take an army, Kolov will know I am coming.”
“I don't want an army today, Marco.”
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“I want to look into the eyes of the man who struck an unarmed girl in the rain.”
“I want him to understand exactly whose house he decided to rob.”
