“Elena!” Charles burst out, his face flushing red with a sudden, desperate surge of the old Peterson arrogance. “You ruined my family! You destroyed my mother! David is working at a used car lot in New Jersey! We had nothing to do with what Vanessa did to your brat!”
Gabriel was across the room in a blur of motion. Before any of the Russian lieutenants could draw their weapons, Gabriel had a hand wrapped around Charles’s throat, lifting him three inches off the carpet and slamming him against the mahogany-paneled wall. The sickening thud echoed like a gunshot.
The Russian lieutenants reached inside their jackets.
“Ah,” I said, raising a single finger.
The massive double doors burst open again. A dozen heavily armed Rossi enforcers poured into the room, their suppressed tactical rifles raised and trained directly at the heads of Nikolai and his men. The air was instantly charged with the metallic, ozone scent of impending violence.
Nikolai froze, his hands spread wide on the table. He looked around the room, realizing the trap he had walked into.
“Gabriel,” I said calmly. “Put the trash down.”
Gabriel dropped Charles, who collapsed to the floor, gasping for air, clutching his bruised throat, tears of absolute terror streaming down his face. Gabriel casually adjusted his cuffs and stepped back, leaving Charles groveling on the Persian rug.
I stood up slowly, smoothing the front of my charcoal silk suit. I walked around the table until I was standing directly over Charles. I looked down at him with the same clinical detachment one might use to observe a dying insect.
“You called my daughter a brat,” I said softly, the silence in the room hanging on my every word. “Five years ago, you watched your sister assault her, and you did nothing. Now, you bring a second-rate Russian street gang into my city to try and steal my shipping lanes.”
I looked up at Nikolai. “Your organization is currently leveraged by thirty million dollars to a private equity firm in Geneva. You used the loans to buy the incoming shipments from St. Petersburg.”
Nikolai’s eyes widened. “How do you know about Geneva?”
“Because I own the firm in Geneva, Nikolai,” I smiled, baring my teeth in a smile that contained zero warmth. “I bought your debt three days ago. And as of 9:00 AM this morning, your loans are in default due to a breach of moral turpitude clauses I had retroactively applied to your accounts. Your shipments in Red Hook? They were seized by Customs an hour ago based on an anonymous tip about contraband.”
Nikolai stood up so fast his chair crashed to the floor. “You bitch!”
Every rifle in the room clicked off its safety simultaneously. Nikolai froze.
“You are bankrupt, Nikolai,” I stated, turning my back on him and walking back to my chair. “Your syndicate is dead in this city. You will be on a flight back to Moscow by midnight, or Gabriel will ensure you leave New York in several small, refrigerated boxes. Your choice.”
Nikolai looked at the rifles, then at Gabriel’s cold, smiling face, and finally at me. He was a violent man, but he wasn’t stupid. He recognized absolute defeat when he saw it. Without a word, he turned on his heel and marched out of the boardroom, his lieutenants backing out slowly behind him.
They didn’t even look at Charles.
When the doors clicked shut, the silence returned, heavier this time. The enforcers lowered their weapons but did not leave the room. Charles was still on his hands and knees, staring at the door where his final lifeline had just abandoned him.
“Well, Charles,” I said, sitting back down and crossing my legs. “It seems your new friends have left you behind.”
Charles slowly dragged himself up to a kneeling position. He looked utterly broken, a hollow shell of the entitled prince who had once sneered at my family. “What are you going to do to me?” he whispered, his voice trembling.
“To you?” I asked, feigning surprise. “Nothing, Charles. You are already nothing. But I do have a message for you to deliver.”
He looked up, a glimmer of desperate hope in his bloodshot eyes. “A message? To who?”
“To Vanessa,” I said softly.
Charles flinched at the name. “I don’t… I don’t know where she is. After the bankruptcy, after Mom went to prison for the tax fraud, Vanessa ran. I haven’t spoken to her in years.”
“I know exactly where she is,” I corrected him. I opened the dossier again and slid a glossy eight-by-ten photograph across the vast table. It came to a stop right in front of Charles’s face.
He leaned forward, squinting. The color drained from his face entirely.
The photograph showed a dingy, neon-lit diner somewhere in the Midwest. Through the rain-streaked window, Vanessa Peterson could be seen wearing a stained pink uniform, wiping down a Formica counter. She looked exhausted, aged beyond her years, her once-perfect blonde hair pulled back in a frizzy ponytail.
“She works the graveyard shift at a truck stop outside of Omaha, Nebraska,” I said. “She lives in a trailer park three miles away. She’s three months behind on her rent. She has no car.”
Charles stared at the photo, his jaw working silently.
“I want you to scrape together whatever pennies you have left, Charles. I want you to buy a bus ticket to Omaha. And I want you to walk into that diner, look your sister in the eye, and tell her exactly who owns the world she is barely surviving in.” I leaned forward, my voice dropping to a vicious whisper. “Tell her Elena Rossi says hello. Tell her that every time she scrubs grease off a plate, she can thank her right hand for the privilege.”
Charles was sobbing now, quiet, pathetic gasping sounds. He reached out with trembling fingers and picked up the photograph.
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