Chapter 7 - The Syndicate's Ultimatum
The underground poker club beneath Little Italy was thick with cigar smoke and the nervous sweat of corrupted politicians.
Lucas Ravalini sat at the head of the mahogany table, his silver lighter clicking rhythmically against the felt surface.
Across from him sat Don Moresco, the aging patriarch of the rival syndicate controlling the Brooklyn docks.
Moresco smiled a toothy, yellowed grin, sliding a dossier across the table that detailed Hannah Cooper's current whereabouts in Queens.
Moresco mocked Lucas for showing weakness, reminding him that sentimentality was a fatal flaw in their world.
He threatened to eliminate the former teacher if Lucas refused to hand over control of the upper Manhattan shipping lanes.
Lucas's expression did not flicker by a single micro-expression, though his veins surged with lethal fury.
He stood up slowly, leaning over the table until his face was mere inches from the old Don's terrified eyes.
Lucas whispered that anyone who dared to breathe near Hannah Cooper would find their lungs filled with the East River by dawn.
Before Moresco's bodyguards could draw their hidden weapons, Lucas's syndicate snipers activated their laser sights across the club.
Red dots danced over the foreheads of every Moresco soldier in the room, freezing them in mid-motion.
Lucas turned his back on the paralyzed syndicate boss, adjusting his cuffs with absolute, ice-cold composure.
As he walked out into the damp alleyway, his phone buzzed violently with an urgent alert from his estate security chief.
The alert stated that Matteo had managed to slip past the interior guards and vanished into the rain-slicked city streets.
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The boy had stolen a tablet and tracked Hannah's address, determined to find his favorite teacher.
Lucas's blood ran ice-cold as he realized his son was now exposed and vulnerable in the open war zone of New York.
