“Sir… There’s Something Under Your Desk.” — The Maid’s Toddler Exposed a Hidden Device… and the Mafia Boss Realized One of His Men Had Betrayed Him

Back at Caruso Holdings, the mahogany table looked like a butcher’s shop that had tried to masquerade as a law firm.

DeLuca was tied to his chair with three lengths of four-gauge industrial electrical wire stripped from the service closet. His head was slumped forward, his breath coming in whistling, ragged gasps. His nose was broken, and his left ear was torn where the crystal carafe had hit him, but he was conscious. Marcus had injected him with two milligrams of epinephrine from the executive medical kit to make sure he didn't slip into shock.

Dominic Greco sat three chairs away, his face buried in his hands, his rosary beads clicking against his knuckles like dry bones.

Julian Vance had been allowed to sit back up, though he had wet himself. He was staring at the blank wall, his lips moving in soundless, frantic prayers.

Michael Russo had completed four calls.

The room smelled of copper, stale tobacco, and the ozone of the high-voltage wire.

The elevator doors at the end of the private corridor chimed.

Marcus looked through the one-way optical peephole set into the mahogany door. “It’s Paulie. He’s got Frankie ‘The Hook.’”

Vincent did not look up from the tablet he was holding. “Let them in.”

The door unsealed with that dull, pneumatic hiss.

Paulie Varga pushed Frankie Greco into the room. Frankie was twenty-eight, wearing a high-visibility orange harbor jacket, grease-stained Carhartt pants, and yellow work boots. He was thick-set, with the same round, heavy jaw as his uncle Dominic, but his eyes were wide with the animal panic of a dog that had been thrown into a bear pit.

When Frankie saw his uncle Dominic clutching a rosary, and Anthony DeLuca bound and bleeding over the mahogany, his knees turned to tallow. He hit the floor hard, his rubber boots sliding on the blood-slick carpet.

“Uncle Dom!” Frankie wailed. “Uncle Dom, what the fuck is this? Paulie said you had the dock leases! He said—”

“Shut up, Frankie,” Dominic sobbed without looking at him. “Just shut your fucking mouth.”

Vincent laid the tablet flat on the desk. He had pulled the black polymer box from beneath the wood.

It sat in the center of the table now, resting on a white paper towel. The red diode was still pulsing.

*Tick. Tick. Tick.*

Beside it lay the six ounces of C-4, its yellow military stamps stark against the polished wood. Vincent had used a ceramic-bladed pocket knife to cut the bridge wire that connected the radio initiator to the blasting cap—a trick he had learned from a mercenary in Colombia twenty years ago during the emerald disputes. The explosive was inert now, but the transmitter was still live.

Vincent looked at Frankie.

“Frankie,” Vincent said.

Frankie crawled three inches on his shins, looking up at Vincent like a condemned man looking at the hangman. “Mr. Caruso… Mr. Caruso, I swear to God, I don't know nothing! Some guys came to the dock! They said they were state marine inspectors! They paid five hundred bucks to sit in the cabin of the tour boat with their gear!”

Vincent walked around the desk. He stopped two feet from Frankie’s face.

“Who had the remote detonator, Frankie?”

Frankie’s breath smelled of cheap coffee and menthol cigarettes. He began to shake so hard that the zippers on his high-visibility jacket rattled. “A guy… a guy named Jimmy. Jimmy ‘The Priest’ Rizzolo. From the Donati crew in Gary. He’s sitting in a blue Dodge Caravan in the lower lot of the Chicago Sun-Times building right now. Across the river. He had a gray plastic case on his lap. He had an earpiece.”

Vincent looked at Michael. “Rizzolo. Is he the one who handled the South Bend collections for Donati?”

“That’s him,” Michael said, nodding once. “Ex-military. Special Forces out of Fort Bragg in ninety-eight. He does the technical work for Sal. If he’s in the van, he’s got the whole relay.”

Vincent looked down at DeLuca.

He reached out with the tip of his oxford shoe and kicked DeLuca’s broken shin.

DeLuca screamed, his head jerking up, his eyes bloodshot and swollen shut on the left side. “Vince… please… Vince…”

“Anthony,” Vincent said softly. “You wanted to be the boss of the South Side. You wanted to sit in this chair and sign the checks.”

Vincent picked up the black transmitter from the paper towel. He held it six inches from DeLuca’s bloody lips.

“The microphone is still hot, Anthony,” Vincent whispered. “Jimmy is sitting across the river with his headphones on, waiting for the sound of my voice saying ‘The meeting is called to order.’ That was the trigger phrase, wasn't it?”

DeLuca didn't answer. He just sobbed, blood running from his chin onto his tie.

“Say it, Anthony,” Vincent commanded.

“Vince… he’ll push the button… he’ll think it’s you…”

“The wire is cut, you stupid prick,” Vincent hissed, his voice dropping into a guttural snarl that made even Marcus stiffen. “The cap is out. Push the button and all he gets is static. Say the words, Anthony. Or I let Marcus take three inches of your skin off with the box cutter.”

DeLuca looked at the black box. His lips trembled. He swallowed a mouth of blood.

“The… the meeting…” DeLuca croaked into the microphone. “The meeting is… called to order.”

Vincent pulled the box back. He set it down.

He looked at Marcus. “Take Paulie and four men from the motor pool. Go to the Sun-Times lot. Bring Jimmy Rizzolo to me. If the van moves, shoot through the engine block. I want Jimmy alive. I want his hands intact so he can dial Sal Donati’s private number.”

Marcus nodded once. “Ten minutes.”

“Paulie,” Vincent said, looking at the lean, hollow-cheeked captain.

“Yes, Vince?”

“You want to prove you’re clean?”

Paulie pulled a pair of black leather gloves from his coat pocket and snapped them over his fingers with a dry *slap.* “Tell me who to carry, Vince.”

“Take Dominic’s nephew down to the river,” Vincent said. “Put him in the hold of his own boat. If Jimmy Rizzolo isn't in that van, Frankie goes into the intake pipe at the filtration plant.”

Frankie began to scream, but Paulie’s gloved hand clamped over his mouth like an iron clamp, hauling the two-hundred-pound mechanic to his feet and dragging him backward through the heavy doors.

The room fell quiet again.

Vincent turned to Dominic Greco.

The old man was still clutching his beads, his shoulders slumped as if the spine had dissolved within his coat.

“Dominic,” Vincent said.

“Vince,” the old man wept. “Just kill me. Just do it yourself. Don't let Marcus do it in an alley. Just shoot me here.”

Vincent walked over to his chair. He sat down behind the Honduras mahogany desk. He looked at the blood on the blotter, the broken crystal on the rug, the open footwell where his knees had rested for twenty years.

“Your daughter is in Hammond,” Vincent said.

Dominic nodded miserably.

“Michael,” Vincent said.

“Yeah, Vince?”

“Call Frank Costello’s people in South Bend. Tell them I want twelve men at the Sheffield Avenue warehouse in twenty minutes. Tell them to burn it to the ground. If Gina Greco has a single scratch on her face, I want three heads delivered to Sal Donati’s front lawn in Lake Geneva before the sun goes down.”

Dominic’s head snapped up. His mouth fell open. His wet eyes were huge, disbelieving. “Vince… you’re… you’re saving her?”

Vincent looked down at his fountain pen. He picked it up, unscrewed the cap, and laid it beside the dead plastic explosive.

“Gina is Carmelo Caruso’s goddaughter,” Vincent said, his voice flat, emotionless. “She belongs to this family. You betrayed me, Dominic. You brought poison into my house because you were weak. But your daughter does not pay for your weakness. She comes home.”

He looked at DeLuca.