Chapter 6 - The Price of Blood
Gregory kicked frantically in the air, his face turning purple, his hands clawing uselessly at Elias’s tattooed forearm.
"Your rights as a father ended the moment you laid hands on them," Elias said, his voice a low, terrifying growl. "You don't own a family. You don't even own your own breath."
Elias threw Gregory across the room. Gregory crashed violently into a stack of wooden crates, coughing and gasping for air on the damp floor.
Marco Marcone, kneeling in handcuffs nearby, looked up at Elias in desperate terror. "Commander Vance... please. This was Thorne's private deal. The Marcone family had no intention of crossing your boundaries."
"Your family funded the trafficking ring, Marcone," Elias replied without looking at him. "Your shipping licenses in New York are revoked. Your cargo is seized under federal maritime customs warrants. And every property you own along the coast now belongs to the Vance Trust."
Federal marshals and FBI tactical teams swarmed into the warehouse, securing the narcotics and locking heavy chains around Marcone and his lieutenants.
Elias walked back over to where Gregory was cowering in the corner.
He dropped a legal folder onto Gregory's chest.
"Inside is a certified termination of parental rights, an absolute annulment of marriage, and a confession of attempted murder and human trafficking," Elias commanded. "Sign it, or I leave you in this warehouse with the federal agents."
With trembling, bloodied hands, Gregory grabbed the pen and signed every single page, weeping in humiliated terror.
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"Take him away," Elias told Dante. "Ensure he serves every single day of his forty-year federal sentence in solitary confinement."
As the federal marshals dragged Gregory out into the flashing red and blue lights, Elias turned his back on the pier, walking out into the crisp night air, heading home to the penthouse where the only family that mattered was waiting.
