Chapter 4 - The Price of Blood
The basement of PS 114 was a dark, cool maze of exposed yellow pipes, ancient coal bunkers, and stacks of unused wooden desks from the 1970s. The air smelled of damp concrete, rust, and old boiler heat.
Gabriel descended the concrete stairs slowly, his leather soles making no sound against the worn steps. He took his gloved hands out of his pockets. In his right hand, he carried a sleek, black suppressed Walther PPK—a weapon he had retrieved from a hidden compartment inside his vest three seconds after leaving the cafeteria corridor.
At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped behind a thick brick support pillar.
Ten yards away, near the heavy steel door of the boiler room, three men stood in the dim light of a single hanging bulb. They wore dark canvas jackets and gloves. Two of them were holding short-barreled pump-action shotguns.
The third man was standing near an electrical panel, a pair of heavy wire cutters in his hand.
He was thin, wiry, with sunken cheeks and a jagged, white scar running from beneath his left ear down into his collar—a souvenir from a prison yard knife fight five years ago.
Leo Ruiz.
"Get the main breaker cut," Ruiz hissed in a low, raspy voice. "When the lights go out in the cafeteria, people run for the exits. In the panic, we take the kid and leave the message for Kane."
"What about the cops at the front door?" one of the men asked, his voice nervous.
"Vance took care of the cops," Ruiz spit, pulling a heavy-caliber revolver from his coat. "Vance turned off the security cameras in the basement ten minutes ago. All we gotta do is—"
"You always were an incompetent idiot, Leo," a low, smooth voice echoed through the dark basement.
The three men spun around instantly, their weapons rising.
Gabriel stepped out from behind the brick pillar. He didn't rush. He stood six feet away in the shadows, his dark suit blending into the gloom, the black cylinder of the suppressor pointing straight at Ruiz’s chest.
"Kane!" Ruiz gasped, his eyes going wide with shock.
Phfft-phfft.
Two quiet, coughing sounds echoed through the room.
The two men standing beside Ruiz dropped instantly to the concrete floor, their shotguns clattering against the stone. Neither of them made a sound. They lay still in the dim light, two small, neat holes blooming across their foreheads.
Ruiz stumbled backward, his back slamming hard against the hot iron of the boiler. He raised his revolver with shaking hands, his eyes wild with terror.
"Don't move, Leo," Gabriel said softly, taking one slow step forward.
"You... you killed Frankie!" Ruiz screamed, his voice cracking in the damp air. "He was my brother! You put him in the dirt for some useless cop!"
"I put Frankie in the dirt because he was stupid," Gabriel said, his tone devoid of heat, devoid of anger—a cold, factual statement delivered by an executioner. "And I'm going to put you in the dirt because you brought your garbage into a school where a little girl is trying to eat a donut."
"Vance helped me!" Ruiz yelled, his eyes darting frantically toward the stairs behind Gabriel, hoping for a rescue that wasn't coming. "Vance gave me the key to the basement door! He wanted you dead just as much as I did! He was afraid Marsh’s notebook would come out!"
"I know," Gabriel said.
"If you shoot me, the whole city comes down on you!" Ruiz threatened, his knuckle whitening over his revolver's trigger. "I got guys outside! I got—"
Gabriel didn't let him finish the sentence.
He stepped forward, his left hand darting out like a striking cobra, catching Ruiz’s right wrist and twisting it upward until the bone snapped with a sharp, sickening crack. The revolver clattered harmlessly onto the concrete floor.
Before Ruiz could scream, Gabriel slammed his palm against Ruiz’s throat, pinning him against the red-hot iron of the boiler. The heat singed through Ruiz’s canvas jacket, making him gasp in agony, but Gabriel’s grip was like an iron vise.
Gabriel brought his face three inches from Ruiz’s scarred cheek.
"Listen to me very carefully, Leo," Gabriel whispered, his voice smooth as velvet, cold as ice. "You are going to walk out of this basement through the rear alley door. You are going to get into the black van waiting on 15th Street. And you are going to leave New York tonight. If I ever see your face, hear your name, or smell your breath in this state again... I won't kill you."
Ruiz choked, his eyes wide with tears of pain. "What... what will you do?"
"I'll find everyone you ever talked to," Gabriel whispered. "And I'll make them watch while I take everything you own."
Gabriel released his grip. Ruiz collapsed onto his knees on the filthy concrete floor, clutching his broken wrist, sobbing quietly in the dark.
Gabriel didn't look at him again. He pulled a linen handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the gun grease off his fingers, and dropped the cloth onto the body of the man lying on the floor.
He picked up his phone and hit speed dial.
"Paulie," Gabriel said into his earpiece as he walked back toward the stairs.
"Boss?"
"Clean up the basement at PS 114. Two bodies near the boiler room. Tell Johnny to take care of the grey van on 14th Street."
"And Captain Vance, boss?"
Gabriel paused on the bottom step, looking up toward the light coming from the cafeteria corridor above.
"Tell Captain Vance that his retirement paperwork needs to be on the Governor’s desk by five o'clock today," Gabriel said softly. "If he hesitates, send the Nassau bank records to the District Attorney's office."
"Consider it done, Mr. Kane."
Gabriel holstered his Walther PPK beneath his tailored vest, adjusted his silk tie, smoothed down his lapels, and walked up the stairs into the bright, warm hallway of the school.
He stopped in front of the bathroom mirror near the gym, checked his hair, ensured there wasn't a single speck of dust on his shoulders, and pushed open the cafeteria double doors.
The room was still noisy, filled with the joyful chatter of children and parents.
Ellie was sitting at the table where he had left her, holding a strawberry glazed donut with pink icing. Sal was standing beside her, looking relieved as Gabriel walked over.
Gabriel sat down on the narrow wooden bench beside her.
"Did you find the strawberry ones?" Gabriel asked, pointing at her plate.
Ellie looked up at him, her dark eyes scanning his face, his cuffs, his hands. She possessed her father's investigative eyes; she knew something had happened in the fifteen minutes he was gone. But she didn't ask. She just offered him a small, bright smile.
"I saved half for you," she said, breaking the donut in two and pushing one half toward his paper napkin.
Gabriel picked up the half donut, took a bite, and swallowed it down.
"It's better than the chocolate one," he admitted.
Ellie giggled—a warm, beautiful sound that echoed through the noisy room, washing away the dark, bloody reality of the basement thirty feet below them.
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For the next two hours, Gabriel Kane—the head of the Five Families, the most feared man in Manhattan—sat on a narrow wooden bench in a public school cafeteria. He listened to a third-grade choir sing a song about fathers, held Ellie’s folder while she showed her teacher her art drawings, and drank three tiny cartons of chocolate milk.
He didn't look at his phone once.
