Chapter 3 - The Price of Loyalty
By three in the morning, the rain had turned into a steady, freezing drizzle that slicked the asphalt of the docks.
Victor stood inside the damp warehouse of Pier 19 once more. The blood on the floor had been scrubbed clean, but the cold air still carried the metallic stench of violence. Paul DeMarco sat on the edge of the redwood desk, playing with an unlit cigar, while six of Victor’s senior captains stood in a semicircle, looking nervous and confused.
Leon Briggs stood in the center of the room, his hands bound behind his back with heavy plastic ties, his mouth swollen and bloody.
“You all know why you’re here,” Victor said, his voice ringing clearly off the corrugated steel walls. He paced slowly in front of his captains, his hands folded behind his back. “When I built this syndicate fifteen years ago, I laid down three absolute rules. We do not deal in poison to children. We do not sell out our own. And we do not harm civilians who have no blood in our game.”
He stopped right in front of Leon.
“Leon thought those rules were suggestions,” Victor continued softly. “He thought that because he wore a heavy ring and carried a gun with my money, he was allowed to brutalize a twenty-four-year-old girl whose only crime was having an idiot for a brother.”
“Boss,” one of the older captains, a man named Russo, ventured cautiously. “Leon was trying to get the drive back. The Russian connection was pressing us hard—”
Victor turned on Russo so fast the older man flinched back a step. “The Russians press us because they think we are savages! They think we are chaos! We are not chaos, Russo. We are structure! We are order! If we become animals who beat helpless women in cold blood, then we are no better than the scum floating down the East River!”
Victor reached into his jacket, pulled out a heavy silver revolver, and laid it casually on the desk beside Paul.
“Leon,” Victor said, turning back to the trembling man. “You stripped a woman of her dignity tonight. You used my name to cover your own sadism.”
“Mr. Hale, please,” Leon wheezed through his broken teeth. “I made a mistake. She fought me—”
“She was a girl in a yellow sweater, Leon!” Victor roared, his composure finally snapping into thunderous fury. “She weighed a hundred and ten pounds! She was terrified! You didn't do a job—you enjoyed it!”
Victor took a deep breath, collecting himself, his eyes turning to ice. He looked at Paul.
“Strip him of his cut. Take his cars, his house, and his accounts. Put him on a boat to South America. If he ever sets foot on North American soil again, shoot him on sight.”
Leon gasped, falling to his knees. In their world, being stripped of everything and exiled was worse than a quick death—it meant living as an unmarked dog in a world full of men who knew you were abandoned.
“And as for Arthur Bennett,” Victor said, turning to the rest of his lieutenants. “He is currently hiding in a safehouse in Queens managed by the Albanian crew. I want him brought to the brownstone tomorrow night. Unharmed. If he has so much as a single scratch on his knuckle, the man who brings him in takes Leon’s place on that boat. Is that understood?”
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“Understood, Boss,” the men chorused in unison.
Victor pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders and stepped out into the night air. The rain fell on his face, cold and cleansing, but he could still see Sadie’s hazel eye filled with terror. He knew that punishing Leon was easy. Restoring a broken life was the work that would tear him apart.
