Chapter 5 - The Man Who Returned
"Drop the weapon, Roman," the voice whispered in my ear. "Or I'll put a hole in your brain before you can pull that trigger."
The voice was older, rougher, and hardened by years of living in the shadows, but I would have recognized it anywhere in the world.
It was Julian.
My younger brother—the boy I had raised after our father was executed in a South End warehouse thirty years ago. The brother I had wept over at an empty grave in St. Joseph’s Cemetery.
I didn't drop my gun. I lowered it two inches, my eyes reflecting in the dark glass of the medicine cabinet in front of me.
In the reflection, I saw him.
Julian looked forty, his face scarred along the left jawline, his left eye milky white from an old chemical burn, but his frame was broad, wearing a expensive charcoal suit that bore the crest of the Moretti Syndicate—our bitterest rivals in New England.
"Julian," I said softly, my voice completely devoid of emotion. "You're standing in my house."
"It was our father's house first, Roman," Julian sneered, pressing the cold barrel of his suppressed pistol deeper into my neck. "And you gave half our docks to the Commission while I spent seven years building an empire in the dark with the Moretti family."
"You faked your death," I stated, piecing together seven years of lies in a single second. "The car crash on Route 1... it was a setup to escape the family debt you accrued in Chicago."
"It was a masterstroke," Julian corrected arrogantly. "The feds stopped looking for me. You took the heat for the Providence shipments. And I operated behind the Moretti curtain, taking twenty percent of your off-shore revenues every month through Marco."
I looked at Marco. My security chief wouldn't meet my eyes. He looked down at the blood-stained linoleum floor.
"How much did he pay you, Marco?" I asked quietly.
"Enough to buy my family three estates in Sicily, Boss," Marco whispered hoarsely. "I'm sorry. Julian offered me a piece of the long game."
"And Clara?" I asked, looking at the pale woman trembling in the corner. "Why lock your own wife inside a stone room behind my study for seven years?"
"Because she found out about the Providence deal," Julian laughed darkly. "She wanted to go to you, Roman. She wanted to tell you that I was the one who authorized the hit on Father twenty years ago to take his seat on the Commission. She was too soft for this life. So I put her where no one would ever look—inside the house of the honorable Roman Duca."
My knuckles turned white around the grip of my gun.
"You killed Father," I said.
May you like
"Father was weak! Just like you!" Julian snapped. "Marco, take his weapon. We're taking them all down to the docks tonight. The boat leaves at 3:00 AM."
Suddenly, a loud, high-pitched metallic screech echoed from the service stairs above us.
