Chapter 7 - The Gallery of Traitors
The silence that followed the gunfire was heavier than the storm howling against the west face of Beacon Hill.
Every step I took down the grand staircase was silent,
measured,
and drenched in the calculated patience of a hunter stalking wounded vermin.
My shoulder burned where a stray ricochet had sliced through my coat,
grazing the muscle beneath,
leaving a burning gash that soaked my sleeve in warm,
sticky crimson.
I ignored the pain.
Pain was a sensation I had learned to compartmentalize at the age of twelve,
when my father first locked me in the cellar with a sparring dummy and three broken ribs to teach me how to breathe through agony.
On the second floor landing,
the air was thick with the scent of wet soot.
Marcus had not run for the front gates,
because the iron gates were secured by four-inch electronic drop-bars that required my thumbprint to disengage during a perimeter lockdown.
He was heading down,
past the ballroom,
past the catering kitchens,
toward the subterranean brick tunnels that ran beneath the foundation.
Those tunnels had been built in the nineteenth century by Boston smugglers,
reinforced by my grandfather during Prohibition,
and wired with fiber-optic relays by Silas Duca to move untraceable gold into the harbor waters.
As I reached the mezzanine gallery,
where portraits of four generations of Duca patriarchs stared down from gilded frames,
the estate’s backup emergency radio on the wall crackled to life.
"Roman,"
Marcus’s voice rasped through the speaker,
breathing hard,
the sound of clanking metal and stone echoing in the background.
"Did you think your brother died innocent?
Did Grace tell you Julian was a saint who fell into an unfortunate trap?"
I paused behind the marble bust of Augustus Caesar,
scanning the darkness of the lower foyer,
my Kimber leveled at chest height.
"Talk while you have breath,
Marcus,"
I answered,
pressing the wall transmitter with the knuckle of my index finger.
"Every word brings you thirty seconds closer to your grave."
A ragged,
hysterical chuckle rattled through the speaker.
"Julian didn't just stumble onto the Russian manifests,
you arrogant fool!
Julian stole the cryptographic security keys directly from your father’s deathbed!
He took the master ledger,
he took the bearer bonds,
and he tried to sell them to the federal prosecutor in exchange for witness protection for that filthy maid and her brats!
He was going to trade you,
Roman!
He was going to hand your name,
your bank accounts,
and your bloodline over to the United States Department of Justice so he could live in a farmhouse in Idaho with Grace Harper!"
The words hung in the darkness of the gallery like poison mist settling over stagnant water.
I stared down at the marble floor below,
watching the red indicator light of the speaker blink in the shadows.
Did Julian want out?
Yes.
I knew that in the deepest,
most private chamber of my heart.
Julian had hated the violence,
he had despised the threats,
and he had wept openly on the night Silas forced him to watch a dock foreman lose three fingers for skimming whiskey crates.
Julian had wanted a clean life,
a quiet life,
a life where his little girl wouldn't wake up to the sound of silenced automatic weapons in the middle of the night.
"Julian was trying to save his family,"
I said into the microphone,
my voice steady,
hollow,
and devoid of any doubt.
"He was trying to do what my father never had the courage to do,
and what I was too cowardly to choose.
And you shot him in the back of the head on the turnpike,
didn't you,
Marcus?"
The radio stayed silent for three agonizing seconds.
Only the sound of water dripping from the tunnel ceiling answered.
"He died crying for her,"
Marcus whispered,
his voice suddenly cruel,
vicious,
and raw with malice.
"He held that cheap bronze medal you gave him,
soaking it in his own vomit and blood,
begging me not to touch the girl.
I threw his car into the embankment,
torched the gas tank,
and watched him turn to bone.
And now,
Roman,
I'm at the lower vault door.
I'm taking the sixty million in bearer certificates Silas left in the foundation wall,
and then I'm blowing the gas main.
The entire mansion will collapse into the cellar,
burying your mother,
the housekeeper,
the brats,
and you beneath three thousand tons of burning brick."
The speaker went dead with a loud pop.
I didn't answer.
I released the microphone,
slipped through the shadow of the gallery banister,
May you like
and sprinted down the back service corridor toward the cellar stairs,
my boots barely whispering against the floor.
