Chapter 4 - The Architecture of the Betrayal
The townhouse on East 72nd Street was a six-story limestone structure that had belonged to the Romano family since the prohibition era. It had a reinforced steel frame, bullet-resistant glass on the lower three levels, and a private elevator that opened directly into a self-contained apartment on the top floor that had been designed for Alessandro’s father during the war with the Genovese family in the nineties.
Genevieve lay on the velvet chaise lounge near the limestone fireplace, a thick cashmere throw covered her legs, her face pale in the light of the gas logs. The baby was asleep in a dark mahogany cradle three feet away, his small breathing pattern the only sound in the large, high-ceilinged room.
Alessandro stood near the wet bar, pouring two fingers of Scotch into a crystal tumbler. He didn't offer her any. He knew she was nursing.
"The apartment in Queens was rented under the name Marie Mercer," Alessandro said, setting the glass down on the marble counter with a small, sharp clink. "The lease was signed on April twelfth—two days before you left Southampton. The security deposit was paid with a certified check drawn on a commercial bank in Jersey City. The account belonged to a logistics company called North Star Freight."
Genevieve didn't look at him. She was staring at the flames, her fingers twisting a loose thread on the cashmere throw. "I don't know anything about freight companies, Alessandro."
"North Star Freight is a subsidiary of Bell Holdings," Alessandro said, taking a slow sip of the liquor. "Vincenzo’s personal investment trust. The one he uses to manage the real estate portfolio he inherited from his uncle in Brooklyn."
Genevieve’s fingers stopped moving. The line of her jaw went tight, the skin turning gray under the firelight.
"Vincenzo didn't kidnap you, Eve," Alessandro said, walking slowly toward her until he could see the tiny reflection of the gas logs in her pupils. "He didn't hand you over to the Costas. He hid you. He gave you the identity, he hired the doctor in Astoria, and he monitored the insurance logs so he would know exactly when the child was born. Why?"
"Go ask him," she whispered.
"I’m asking my wife," Alessandro said, his voice dropping into a register that was terrifyingly soft. "The woman who took a vow in the cathedral on Fifth Avenue. The woman who looked me in the eye when I came home from the docks last winter and told me she would stay with me until the stones turned to sand. Why did you take the counselor's hand, Eve?"
Genevieve suddenly pulled the throw off her legs and stood up, her body shaking with a post-labor exhaustion that made her lean against the stone mantelpiece for support. Her face was no longer terrified; it was filled with a hard, ancient disgust that looked remarkably like his own.
"Because he showed me the logs, Alessandro!" she shouted, her voice cracking as she glanced toward the cradle to ensure the child hadn't stirred. "The shipping logs from the terminal in Elizabeth. The ones from September twenty-four. The month before our wedding."
Alessandro didn't move. His hand remained wrapped around the crystal tumbler, his knuckles white.
"He showed me the manifest for the container that came in from Palermo," Genevieve said, her tears finally breaking over her eyelashes, cutting clean paths through the dust on her cheeks. "The one that had my brother’s name on the internal bill of lading. My brother, Alessandro. The one who disappeared from the fishing boat in Narragansett Bay two weeks before you proposed to me."
She took a long, trembling step toward him, her hands balled into small fists at her sides. "You told me the Costas took him because of a gambling debt. You told me you would find the men who did it. You had me sit at your table while you signed the peace with the family that you claimed had killed him, and all the time... it was your container, Alessandro. It was your crew that met the boat at the pier. It was your underboss who signed the clearance form."
Alessandro looked down at the Scotch in his glass. The amber liquid was perfectly still.
"Your brother was skimming the wholesale shipments from the pier, Genevieve," he said, his voice flat, devoid of any emotional color. "He wasn't a fisherman. He was a courier for the Lucianos in Boston. He tried to move three kilos of uncut base out of the yard in a dry-dock crate. If my father hadn't intervened, the entire commission would have put a contract on your father's house in Fall River."
"So you killed him to save the family?" she sobbed. "You killed my brother to make the ledger square, and then you married me so you could keep the mill contracts within the Romano circle?"
"I married you because I loved you," Alessandro said, his eyes rising to find hers, his gaze as hard and unyielding as the limestone behind her. "And as for your brother—I didn't kill him, Genevieve. I put him on a fruit transport to Buenos Aires with fifty thousand dollars in cash and a clean passport. He’s currently running a commercial refrigeration business in San Isidro. He’s had three children since twenty-four. He sends a report to Vincenzo’s office on the first of every month."
Genevieve froze, her mouth slightly open, her breath catching in her throat like a dry bone. "What?"
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"Vincenzo didn't hide you to protect you from me, Eve," Alessandro said, walking past her toward the elevator alcove. "He hid you because he knew that as long as you were missing, I would spend my resources destroying the Costa organization. He wanted the Newark docks. He wanted the garbage contracts in Staten Island. He used your grief to turn me into a hammer that would clear the field for his own investments."
He opened the elevator door, the metal gears humming in the shaft. "Stay with the boy, Genevieve. I’m going down to the office to finish the audit."
