Chapter 7 - The Settlement at Snyder Avenue
The dive bar on Snyder Avenue was a dim, foul-smelling subterranean tavern tucked beneath an elevated train line. The air inside was thick with stale beer, fried food, and cheap tobacco smoke.
At a corner booth near the back restrooms sat Cory Kincaid. He was thirty-two, but looked forty—his skin sallow and pockmarked, his teeth stained from years of drug abuse, wearing a stained denim jacket over a faded t-shirt. He was loudly regaling two scruffy associates with his plans for the evening.
“She thinks she’s high and mighty now!” Cory slurred, slamming a empty shot glass onto the sticky table. “Got fifty grand sitting in a bank account! Half that money is mine under the law! I’m going down to that house tonight, and she’s going to sign the check over, or I’ll take the kid!”
His two companions laughed nervously, but their laughter died instantly as the heavy front door of the tavern opened.
Dominic Bruno stepped into the bar.
The ambient chatter in the tavern withered away within seconds. The bartender, an old neighborhood veteran who knew every face connected to the South Side syndicate, immediately reached under the counter, turned off the jukebox, and stepped back into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.
Dominic walked down the narrow center aisle, his heavy boots echoing on the linoleum floor. Dean followed two paces behind, stepping to the left to block the side exit.
Cory looked up, blinking through a drunken fog. “The hell are you supposed to be?”
Dominic stopped at the edge of the booth. He looked at Cory with a stare so cold, so completely devoid of human warmth, that the two men sitting beside Cory immediately slid out of the booth and backed away into the shadows without uttering a word.
“Cory Kincaid,” Dominic said smoothly.
“Yeah? Who’s asking?” Cory sneered, trying to muster an aura of drunken toughness. “If you’re one of Tess’s new boyfriends, you can tell her—”
Before Cory could finish his sentence, Dominic reached across the table, grabbed Cory by his greasy hair, and slammed his face flat onto the wooden tabletop with a sickening THUD.
Cory let out a muffled scream of pain as blood erupted from his broken nose, splattering across the sticky beer rings. Dominic didn't let go. He kept Cory’s head pinned firmly against the wood, leaning down until his lips were inches from the trembling man’s ear.
“Listen to me very carefully, Cory,” Dominic whispered, his voice a razor-sharp thread in the silent bar. “Four years ago, you walked out on a good woman and a sick child. You left her with your debts, your mess, and your broken life. She fixed it herself.”
“She’s my wife!” Cory choked out, blood dripping from his chin onto the table. “I have rights!”
Dominic tightened his grip on Cory’s hair, pressing his face harder into the wood. “You have no rights on this side of the river. You have no wife. And if you ever speak her name again, or step within ten miles of South Philadelphia, I will personally throw you into the Delaware River with fifty pounds of scrap iron tied to your ankles.”
Dominic reached into his coat pocket with his free hand, pulled out a thick envelope containing five thousand dollars in cash and a pre-signed, legally binding absolute surrender of parental rights and divorce consent form. He slapped it onto the wet table beside Cory’s bleeding nose.
“You’re going to take that pen,” Dominic ordered, releasing his hair just enough for Cory to lift his hand. “You’re going to sign those paper. Then you’re going to take that five thousand dollars, get on a bus back to Phoenix, and never come back. If you’re still in Pennsylvania by sunrise tomorrow, Dean will hunt you down.”
Cory sobbed, wiping blood from his eyes with his trembling sleeve. He looked at Dominic’s terrifying, unblinking face, then at the heavy pen resting on the table.
With shaking fingers, Cory picked up the pen and scribbled his signature across the bottom lines of the legal document.
May you like
Dominic picked up the signed paper, reviewed the signature with a cold eye, and slid it into his inner suit pocket.
“Get him out of my sight, Dean,” Dominic said, turning his back on the broken man and walking out of the tavern into the crisp, clean night air.
