A feared crime lord spent days trying to get his traumatized daughter to eat, until an exhausted waitress made her speak a single word. / Chapter 33 / 120

Chapter 33 - The Five Masks

Marcus pressed a sequence of codes into the terminal, and the voice that had spoken through Sofia’s nursery radio crackled through the phone’s high-gain speaker.

"Blackwood."

The voice belonged to Don Salvatore Cavallo—the seventy-two-year-old patriarch of the Cavallo syndicate, a man who had survived three mob wars by being more ruthless, more duplicitous, and more patient than any rival.

"I imagine you are standing in the wreckage of your little kingdom right now," Cavallo said, his voice raspy, laced with dry, mocking amusement. "Looking at the broken toys. Thinking about the empire you built on the graves of men who were smarter than you."

Dante took the phone from Marcus’s hand. He pressed the receiver to his ear. When he spoke, his voice was so devoid of emotion it sounded like stones grinding together beneath a glacier. "Where is she, Salvatore?"

A dry chuckle hissed through the line. "She is sleeping. We had to give her a little sedative. Nasty little creature, your daughter. Stuck three inches of steel into my nephew’s forearm before he could get the zip-ties on her. But don't worry. She’s breathing. For now."

"If you touch a single hair on her head," Dante said, "I will not just kill you. I will dig up your ancestors, butcher your sons, and bury the name Cavallo so deep into the dirt that the devil himself will forget it existed."

"Save the poetry, Dante. The time for your threats is over," Cavallo spat, his tone hardening into pure venom. "You took three shipping docks in Brooklyn. You seized our laundering channels through the financial district. You pushed the old families into the shadows and called yourself a king. But kings bleed when you take away their bloodline."

Maya stepped closer to Dante, straining to hear every syllable, her fingernails digging deep into the palms of her hands.

"What are your terms?" Dante asked.

"Surrender," Cavallo replied immediately. "Not your money. Not your territories. You. Tomorrow morning, at dawn. The Old Pier 42 at the Red Hook terminal. You come alone. No bodyguards. No tactical vests. No trackers. You walk onto the barge, you kneel, and you let my men put a bullet behind your ear on a live satellite feed to the entire syndicate council."

"And Sofia?"

"Once your corpse rolls into the East River," Cavallo sneered, "the girl will be delivered to a Catholic convent in Sicily. She will live behind stone walls, take a vow of silence, and never see New York again. That is the only mercy I offer. Refuse, or bring even one sniper within three miles of the docks... and I will throw her into an industrial incinerator before the sun clears the horizon."

The line clicked. The transmission went dead.

Silence fell over the lavender room once more. The wind groaned through the blown-out window, lifting the lace curtains into ghostly billows.

Marcus slammed his fist against the doorframe, his knuckle splitting against the splintered wood. "Red Hook Pier 42 is an ambush basin! It’s surrounded by three-story shipping container stacks and deep water! Even if you go there, they won't spare the kid! Cavallo has never left a loose end in fifty years!"

Dante turned away from the window. He did not look defeated. He looked transformed—the corporate billionaire, the quiet father who read bedtime stories, had been stripped away completely, leaving only the butcher who had carved his way to the throne of New York.

"He won't spare her," Dante agreed calmly. "Which is why we are not going to his exchange."

"Then what are we doing?" Maya asked, her voice trembling but fierce. "We only have five hours until dawn!"