Chapter 4 - The Man I Buried Ten Years Ago
The symbol behind Tommy belonged to a building on the Brooklyn waterfront that no longer officially existed.
Ten years earlier, it had been called the Black Crown Social Club.
Patrick ran meetings there before I took control of the organization. After his death, I ordered the property emptied, boarded, and forgotten.
At least I thought I had.
Gideon studied the video frame.
“That place was sold.”
“To a holding company.”
“Which one?”
I already knew the answer would be ugly.
He checked.
“Vale Property Management.”
Clary closed her eyes.
“Arthur.”
“Arthur,” I said.
I walked toward the door.
She followed.
“No.”
I turned.
“No what?”
“You’re not leaving me here.”
“You’re absolutely staying here.”
“My brother is in that building.”
“And Arthur is expecting you to make me reckless.”
Her face changed.
“So that’s what I am? A weakness?”
“That’s what he thinks you are.”
“What do you think?”
The question landed between us with more force than either of us expected.
I looked at her for a long second.
“I think you’re the reason I’m not going in there angry.”
She blinked.
I continued.
“If this were only about Arthur, I’d tear the building apart. But Tommy needs me thinking clearly.”
Clary’s shoulders lowered slightly.
“Then let me help you think clearly.”
Gideon turned away, pretending to check his phone.
I exhaled.
“Fine. You come as far as the command vehicle. You do not enter the building.”
“Declan—”
“That is not negotiable.”
She stared at me.
Then, quietly, “Bring him back.”
“I will.”
We reached the waterfront forty minutes later.
The Black Crown looked smaller than I remembered.
Age had eaten the paint from the brick. Broken windows stared toward the river. Rusted loading doors faced a narrow service road lined with weeds.
But when I saw the crown symbol above the side entrance, I was twenty-five again.
Patrick was alive.
Arthur was loyal.
And I still believed betrayal came from enemies.
Gideon handed me an earpiece.
“Thermal shows six people inside, maybe seven. Tommy is on the second floor.”
“Arthur?”
“Unknown.”
“Power?”
“Generator in the basement.”
Clary sat in the command SUV behind us, watching through the windshield.
I walked back to her window.
She rolled it down.
“Whatever Arthur says in there,” she whispered, “don’t let him make you become what he says you are.”
I almost laughed.
“You give strange advice to criminals.”
“You give strange jobs to housekeepers.”
For the first time that night, I smiled.
Then I went inside.
The first floor was empty.
Too empty.
Dust covered the tables, but fresh footprints cut through it.
I knew the old layout by memory.
Bar on the left.
Storage behind it.
Staircase at the rear.
Patrick once stood behind that bar and told me I would never survive his world because I still cared too much what people thought of me.
He had been wrong.
I stopped caring.
Maybe that had been worse.
A speaker crackled overhead.
Arthur’s voice filled the room.
“Welcome home.”
I stopped.
“Show yourself.”
“You always were impatient.”
“You always mistook patience for fear.”
Arthur laughed.
“Still performing.”
His voice came from every corner.
“You know what I admired most about Patrick?” he continued. “He understood what you never did. Power has to be fed.”
“You had him killed.”
Silence.
Then Arthur sighed.
“You really want to do this over a speaker?”
A light switched on upstairs.
I climbed.
Gideon’s voice came through my earpiece.
“Two guards at rear exit. Team moving.”
I reached the second floor.
Tommy sat tied beneath the same hanging light from the video.
Arthur stood behind him.
Silver pistol in one hand.
No jacket.
No smile.
For nine years, I had seen him beside me at funerals, weddings, negotiations, hospital rooms, and court hearings.
He had been the first man to arrive after my mother died.
He had carried her casket.
Now I looked at him and saw a stranger wearing an old friend’s face.
“Let him go,” I said.
Arthur rested the gun against Tommy’s shoulder.
“You brought the files?”
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
“Then why ask?”
Tommy’s mouth was taped. His eyes were wide.
Arthur smiled faintly.
“Because I wanted to see whether Clary changed you as quickly as I thought she would.”
“You put her in my house.”
“I approved her employment.”
“You arranged Tommy’s debt.”
“Yes.”
The word came so easily that my stomach turned.
“Why?”
“Because you stopped trusting women years ago. Money didn’t interest you. Alliances bored you. Threats only made you meaner.”
He tilted his head.
“But guilt? Guilt has always owned you.”
I said nothing.
“So I found a girl with an exhausted face, a beautiful voice, and a brother stupid enough to gamble. I thought eventually she would ask you for help. Then I’d use the boy to steer you.”
Tommy made an angry sound through the tape.
Arthur ignored him.
“I didn’t expect you to hear her sing on your birthday. That part was luck.”
“Bad luck for you.”
Arthur smiled.
“Maybe.”
I took one step forward.
He raised the gun.
“Stay there.”
I stopped.
“You said you admired Patrick,” I said. “Did you admire him before or after you sold his location?”
Something moved behind Arthur’s eyes.
There.
The wound.
The truth.
“Patrick was weak.”
“He trusted you.”
“He humiliated me.”
“For what?”
Arthur’s jaw flexed.
“He was going to push me out. Said I enjoyed hurting people too much. Said men like me destroyed organizations from the inside.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
“Sounds like Patrick.”
“Don’t.”
“He was right.”
Arthur’s face changed.
“You inherited everything because I made you strong enough to hold it.”
“You had him killed.”
“I gave the Russos a route. That’s all.”
Tommy stopped moving.
I heard Gideon in my ear.
We have it.
Arthur didn’t know his confession was being recorded through my mic.
I kept him talking.
“And the fake debts?”
“Funding.”
“For Vescari?”
“For the future.”
“Your future.”
Arthur’s smile returned.
“My future was supposed to begin after you were indicted. You would disappear into a courtroom. I would keep the organization stable. Vescari would get his ports.”
“And Clary?”
His eyes sharpened.
“She was supposed to make you careless.”
A cold anger moved through me.
“You threatened her.”
“I reminded her where she stood.”
“She stands somewhere you never will.”
Arthur laughed.
“Beside you?”
“No.”
I looked at Tommy.
“Outside this world.”
Then every light in the building went out.
Gideon had cut the generator.
Arthur shouted.
Tommy dropped sideways.
I moved toward the sound.
A gun fired.
Glass shattered.
Someone hit me from the side.
I drove an elbow backward and heard a man collapse.
Another shot.
Then Gideon’s team flooded the room with white tactical lights.
“Drop it!”
Arthur stood near the window.
His gun was gone.
Tommy lay on the floor.
I crossed the room in three strides.
“Tommy.”
His eyes opened.
Alive.
The bullet had missed him.
Arthur backed toward the broken window.
“You think this ends with me?” he shouted.
“No.”
I stood.
“It begins with you.”
He smiled.
Then he stepped backward through the window.
Clary screamed through my earpiece from the command vehicle.
I ran to the opening.
A fire escape ladder shook below.
Arthur had landed one level down and was already descending toward the alley.
“Rear team!” Gideon yelled.
Men moved.
But a car roared from the shadows.
Arthur jumped inside.
The vehicle disappeared toward the expressway.
Gideon swore.
I didn’t chase him.
I cut Tommy free.
Five minutes later, Clary ran into the building despite every order I had given her.
She saw Tommy alive and threw herself around him.
They both cried.
I stood several feet away.
Then Clary looked at me.
There was a bruise forming along my cheek and blood on my shirt from shattered glass.
She walked over.
“Are you hurt?”
“Not badly.”
Her hand rose toward my face, then stopped.
As if she suddenly remembered who I was.
I took her wrist gently and guided her palm the last inch.
Her fingers touched my cheek.
Everything in me went still.
“You came back,” she whispered.
“I said I would.”
“For Tommy.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes searched mine.
“Only for Tommy?”
Before I could answer, Gideon approached.
“Boss.”
His face told me the moment was over.
“What?”
He held out a phone recovered from one of Arthur’s men.
On the screen was a message sent fifteen minutes earlier.
VALE FAILED. MOVE TO PHASE TWO.
Below it was an attachment.
A photograph of Clary leaving the mansion three days earlier.
Taken from across the street.
I looked at her.
Arthur had not been the only one watching.
And whoever was behind phase two had just made Clary the center of the war.
The morning after the Black Crown, Clary found a box outside Tommy’s room.
She called Gideon before touching it.
He scanned it, opened it, and found thirty-eight thousand dollars in cash.
Exactly what she had paid collectors.
On top sat a white card with my handwriting.
RETURNED. NOT GIFTED.
Clary carried the box into my temporary office and set it on the desk hard enough to rattle a lamp.
“What is this?”
“Your money.”
“I know what money looks like.”
“Then we’re making progress.”
She did not smile.
“You could have transferred it.”
“I didn’t have your banking information.”
“You have an organization that can find a man in Queens in five minutes, but you don’t have my banking information?”
“I was trying not to be intrusive.”
That finally made her laugh.
“Declan Knox is respecting privacy now?”
“Apparently I’m having a strange week.”
She sat across from me.
“I’m taking it.”
“Good.”
“But not because you’re rescuing me.”
“I know.”
“I earned that money.”
“I know.”
“And Tommy owes me personally.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You already told him that, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head.
Then her fingers brushed the edge of the card.
“Returned. Not gifted,” she read.
“You said you didn’t want charity.”
“I don’t.”
“So it isn’t charity.”
She looked at me for a long time.
“You listen.”
“Occasionally.”
“No. You really listen.”
I did not know why that compliment felt more intimate than women telling me I was handsome, powerful, or dangerous.
Maybe because none of those things required knowing me.
Clary picked up the box.
At the door, she turned.
“For the record, I still don’t trust you completely.”
“That would concern me if you did.”
“And I’m still angry.”
“You should be.”
“And this doesn’t buy forgiveness.”
“I’m not selling anything.”
Her expression softened.
“Good.”
After she left, I looked down at the empty space where the cash had been.
Arthur understood transactions.
May you like
So did I.
But for the first time, I was learning that the most important things between two people could not be purchased, demanded, or negotiated.
