Chapter 3 - Confession at Gunpoint
The fire in the library hearth had burned down to a bed of grey ash by the time Helena D’Angelo was brought back through the doors. Two guards stood behind her, their hands resting lightly on their belts, but Helena walked with her chin held high, her black velvet gown uncreased despite the dampness of the cellar. She didn't look at Nora, nor did she look at the cardboard box containing Sophie’s doll. She walked straight to the leather armchair opposite Roman’s desk and sat down without being asked.
"You look like your grandfather when he found out the dock workers were organizing in '52," Helena said, her voice steady as she smoothed her skirt. "Stupid, violent, and utterly incapable of seeing the thirty-thousand-foot view."
Roman didn't sit. He stood behind the desk, his hands flat on the polished mahogany, his knuckles white. On the speakerphone in the center of the blotter, a low, rhythmic hum indicated the open line to St. Jude’s rectory.
"Father Thomas isn't picking up on the first ring, Mother," Roman said softly. "Must be late for evening prayers. Or maybe he’s busy counting the four million dollars you parked in his parish basement."
Helena smiled—a thin, bloodless stretching of her lips. "The Church has protected this family since your great-grandfather stepped off the boat with a crate of contraband olive oil and a prayer book. You think a few million dollars in anonymous donations is something they'll question? The diocese uses that money to fund orphanages in Calabria and soup kitchens in the Bronx. It was insured, Roman. Cleaned through three layers of Vatican-approved trusts."
"It was Sophie's money," Nora spoke up from the corner. Her voice was no longer a whisper; it carried a cold, sharp edge that made Helena’s head snap around. Nora stood up, her thin frame trembling slightly, but her eyes were fixed on the older woman with the terrifying clarity of a mother who had nothing left to lose. "You took fifty thousand dollars every month that was legally designated for my daughter's trust by the family court settlement. You left her in a room with peeling lead paint so you could buy protection for your little empire of thieves."
"The child is a D’Angelo," Helena spat, her aristocratic composure finally cracking at the edges as venom leaked into her tone. "In our world, children are currency, Nora. They are leverage against rivals, insurance policies against federal indictments, and pieces on a board you don't even know how to play. That little girl should have been raised in a convent in Switzerland with a security detail and a lineage tutor, not scrubbing floors in a Queens tenement with a mother who didn't have the stomach for the life."
"Enough," Roman said. The single word dropped into the room like a heavy iron weight.
He reached down and tapped the speakerphone. The hum clicked off, replaced by the sound of heavy breathing on the other end of the line.
"Father Thomas," Roman said.
"Mr. D’Angelo," a nervous, reedy voice rattled through the small speaker. "It’s... it’s late. We’ve already closed the church for the night—"
"Save the performance for Sunday," Roman interrupted. "The safe behind the altar at St. Jude's. The one containing the Sanctuary Holdings bearer bonds. Savage is outside your rectory right now with twenty men and a hydraulic cutter. You have two minutes to tell me the combination, or the next sound you hear won't be a confession."
"Roman, you can't—" Helena started, lunging half out of her chair before the two guards pressed her back down by the shoulders.
"Quiet," Roman didn't even look at her. "Well, Father? Do I burn the church down with you inside it, or do I get the numbers?"
A long, agonizing pause stretched across the phone line, broken only by the sound of distant rain and the old priest's ragged wheezing.
"Three turns left to forty-two," the voice whispered, cracking with terror. "Right to eighteen... left to sixty-five."
"Good boy," Roman said. He didn't say goodbye; he simply pressed the end button with the palm of his hand. He looked up at Savage, who gave a brief, sharp nod and pulled his own phone from his pocket to relay the combination to the strike team in Manhattan.
Roman finally walked around the desk. He stopped two feet from Helena’s chair, looking down at the woman who had birthed him, raised him, and systematically dismantled his life piece by piece under the guise of maternal protection.
"You're not going to jail, Mother," Roman said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "The federal penitentiary is too clean for someone who calculated the value of a three-year-old child's life in shipping manifests."
Helena’s eyes widened slightly, the first real crack of panic appearing behind her aristocratic mask. "I am your mother. Without me, you are nothing. The syndicate would tear you apart in a week without my council—"
"The syndicate is mine now," Roman said, leaning down so his face was inches from hers. "And you are going to pack a single small bag. By midnight, you'll be on a freight freighter heading for the monastery in Calabria that you supposedly fund. You will live the rest of your life in a twelve-by-twelve stone cell with no phone, no visitors, and no name. If you try to leave, the monks won't stop you—but my men at the port will finish what I started tonight."
May you like
He straightened up, turning away before she could reply.
"Savage. Take her out."
