Chapter 2 - The House of Debt
The library of the D’Angelo estate smelled of old leather, stale cigar smoke, and fear.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling mahogany doors, the heavy thud of combat boots on marble signaled that Savage’s sweep was systematic and complete. No one entered, no one left, and every phone within a five-mile radius had been jammed by the signal-interception van parked by the fountain.
Roman sat behind the massive walnut desk that had belonged to his grandfather—the founder who had brought the first crates of smuggled tobacco through the Brooklyn navy yards in 1946. On the corner of the desk sat a cardboard box containing three juice boxes, a crust of dry white bread, and a plastic doll with one missing arm—the total inventory of Sophie’s worldly possessions, retrieved by two of Savage’s men from the basement apartment in Queens where Nora had been hiding for three years.
Nora sat across from him in a high-backed wing chair. She hadn't touched the scotch Roman had poured her; instead, her hands were clasped so tightly over her knees that her knuckles were white as porcelain. Her hair, once a bright chestnut cascade that Roman remembered tangling in his fingers during long nights in their apartment on the Hudson, was streaked with grey at the temples, her skin thin and papery beneath the harsh library lamps.
"You should have called," Roman said quietly. He was cleaning the barrel of a Sig Sauer P226 with an oily cloth, the metallic smell mixing with the dust of the room. "Even if you hated me. Even if you thought I was the one who sent the men to burn down your father's garage. You knew my code. You knew the Swiss bank number."
"I did call," Nora said, her voice flat, drained of all emotion like a well that had gone dry during a drought. "The first year, I called the primary line forty times. Every time, your mother answered. She told me you were dead, Roman. She told me your car went off the cliff on the coastal road six months after I left. She said the police found your signet ring in the wreckage."
Roman stopped cleaning. The oily rag remained pressed against the cold steel of the slide. "My ring?" He looked down at his right hand, where the heavy gold band sat securely on his pinky. "She gave me this back. She said she found it in the old man's safety deposit box after the funeral."
"She lied about everything," Nora whispered, her gaze finally lifting to meet his. There was no anger left in her eyes—only a hollow, terrifying exhaustion. "She visited me in the motel in Bridgeport three months after Sophie was born. She didn't bring diapers or formula. She brought a briefcase with five hundred thousand dollars in banded tens and twenties. She told me to take the child, disappear into the city, and never use your name again. If I stayed, she said you would use Sophie as a pawn in the succession war with the Sicilian faction. She said if I went underground, she would send fifty thousand a month to keep us comfortable."
"And the money stopped," Roman said.
"Three years ago," Nora nodded. "Right after Sophie's first birthday. The wire didn't bounce—it just stopped arriving. The landlord threw us out six months later. We've been moving from one basement to another ever since. I worked nights scrubbing floors in the garment district while an old woman down the hall watched Sophie for five dollars an hour. That's why she's so small, Roman. That's why she doesn't talk much."
Roman didn't answer. He didn't need to. The Sig Sauer made a sharp clack as he slammed the magazine home.
The library door clicked open. Savage stepped inside, his long trench coat damp from the autumn drizzle outside. He didn't look at Nora; he laid a thick stack of ledger printouts and three encrypted hard drives on the desk between them.
"We cracked the secondary safe behind the chapel," Savage said, his voice like grinding stones. "The old woman wasn't just paying off federal judges, Boss. She was running a parallel book. She’s been skimming twenty percent of every shipping manifest since the port modernization project began in 2021. And she wasn't keeping it in Zurich."
"Where?" Roman asked.
"The church," Savage replied. "St. Jude’s on Tenth. Father Thomas has been signing off on fake charitable foundations that funneled four million dollars a year into an account registered under a shell corporation called Sanctuary Holdings."
Roman stood up slowly, the chair legs scraping against the floor. He picked up the Sig Sauer and tucked it into the holster beneath his left armpit. He walked over to the window, looking out across the rain-slicked lawns where the tail lights of his capos' Mercedes vehicles glowed like red eyes in the dark, trapped behind the iron gates by his own orders.
"Bring my mother in here," Roman said.
May you like
"She's in the wine cellar," Savage said. "Guarded by two boys from the docks."
"Bring her up," Roman repeated without turning around. "And bring Father Thomas on speakerphone. Let's see how much God charges to keep a secret in Brooklyn."
