Chapter 5 - The Brooklyn Reckoning
The rain hammered relentlessly against the corrugated steel roof of Pier 42 in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Inside the drafty, cavernous warehouse, the smell of diesel exhaust, salt water, and damp concrete filled the air. Standing beside a towering stack of shipping containers were thirty heavily armed Moretti enforcers in dark tactical gear, their submachine guns resting at low-ready.
In the center of the warehouse floor, tied securely to a heavy wooden pallet beneath a single hanging halogen bulb, was Donald Moretti.
His expensive tailored suit was soaked with rainwater and grease, his silk tie ripped, his face bruised and swollen where Marco’s men had dragged him out of his penthouse in Tribeca forty minutes earlier.
“Alessandro! Please!” Donald wailed, his voice echoing off the steel beams of the warehouse. “This is a misunderstanding! I am your blood! I am your cousin! We grew up together in Long Island!”
The heavy sliding doors of the warehouse rolled open with a grinding metallic screech.
Alessandro walked inside.
He didn't wear a coat. He wore a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing the dark ink of family crests and tactical battle insignias running up his forearms. He walked with slow, deliberate, majestic power, his polished boots clicking against the wet concrete.
He stopped five feet in front of Donald.
Alessandro didn't yell. He pulled up an empty steel tool chest, sat down, and rested his elbows on his knees, looking at Donald with the detached curiosity of a surgeon inspecting a necrotic limb.
“Five hundred thousand dollars, Donald,” Alessandro spoke, his voice carrying effortlessly over the drumming rain.
Donald flinched, his eyes darting frantically toward the armed guards surrounding him. “Alessandro... Uncle Carmine told me to do it! He ordered the wire! He said the girl was a liability to our family’s standing in New York!”
“My father is dead, Donald,” Alessandro said calmly. “He answered for his sins two years ago. But you... you kept her here. You had your assistant dock her pay fifteen percent while she lived in a walk-up with a broken radiator in Queens.”
He leaned in closer, his dark eyes boring into Donald’s soul.
“My daughter rode a public city bus in the rain this morning wearing a cleaning uniform five sizes too big because she thought her mother was going to be thrown into the street,” Alessandro whispered, the lethal vibration in his voice making the hair on Donald’s neck stand up. “A six-year-old child tried to wash my windows to pay for her mother’s medicine.”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Alessandro!” Donald sobbed hysterically, snot and tears smearing across his bruised face. “I’ll give it all back! The terminal shares, the penthouse, the offshore accounts! Take everything! Just let me leave the country! I’ll go to Canada—you’ll never see me again!”
Alessandro stood up slowly.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a thick, legal document, and tossed it onto Donald’s lap.
“This is an irrevocable asset forfeiture and surrender agreement,” Alessandro said. “Every stock option, every commercial real estate deed, and every bank account bearing your name is officially transferred to the Emma Rose Moretti Sovereign Trust.”
Donald nodded frantically. “I’ll sign! Untie my hand, I’ll sign right now!”
Marco stepped forward, cutting the zip-tie on Donald’s right wrist, handing him a pen. Donald scribbled his signature across all eight pages with shaking, spastic strokes.
“There! It’s done! It’s signed!” Donald gasped, looking up with desperate, pathetic hope. “Can I go now?”
Alessandro looked down at him with cold, absolute disgust.
“You’re going on a trip, Donald,” Alessandro said softly.
“A... a trip?”
“A commercial cargo freighter leaves Pier 42 at four in the morning bound for a bauxite mining facility in Western Australia,” Alessandro stated, turning his back on his cousin. “You will work as a third-shift boiler room stoker for eighteen dollars an hour. If you ever attempt to contact anyone in New York, or if you ever step foot on North American soil again... Marco will have your coordinates within six hours.”
“No! Alessandro! You can’t do this to a Moretti!” Donald screamed as two burly enforcers dragged him away toward the cargo berths. “Alessandro!”
Alessandro didn't look back.
May you like
He walked out into the cool, cleansing October rain, stepping into the warmth of his Maybach.
“To the hospital, Marco,” Alessandro ordered. “It’s time to bring my family home.”
