Chapter 13 - Four Fingerprints
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The silence inside the grand dining room was so absolute that the drip of spilled scotch falling from the edge of the mahogany table onto the Persian rug sounded like a gunshot.
Victor Halstead’s face drained of every drop of color, turning the shade of wet ashes beneath his silver hair. He backed up half a step until the backs of his knees hit Lucian’s leather chair, his hand instinctively darting toward the inside breast pocket of his black mourning suit.
"Don't even breathe toward that pocket, Victor," Roman said coldly from six feet away, his suppressed submachine gun leveled directly at the center of the older man’s forehead while two guards stepped forward and yanked a snub-nosed revolver from Victor’s jacket.
The five capos stood frozen around the table with their hands raised slightly in the air, terrified that the slightest twitch would make Lucian think they were part of the coup.
"Lucian—my God, you're alive!" Enzo Castiglione breathed, spitting his unlit cigar onto his plate. "Victor called us at six in the morning! He swore on your father’s grave the clinic doctors pronounced you dead and that the girl—"
Enzo stopped short, his dark eyes darting toward Clara, who stood composed and steady beside Lucian.
Lucian didn't look at the capos yet. He walked all the way to the head of the table, stopping less than twelve inches from the man who had stood beside his father’s casket ten years ago and sworn eternal fealty to the Sterling bloodline.
"Sit down, gentlemen," Lucian told the five capos without taking his silver-gray eyes off Victor. "Except you, Victor. You can stay standing."
The five capos dropped back into their leather chairs immediately, pushing the glasses Victor had poured far away from their hands as if the crystal were radioactive.
Lucian reached into his suit pocket and pulled out two items, tossing them onto the table right on top of Victor’s forged folders.
The first was the high-resolution photograph printed from the conservatory frost camera at 2:18 PM yesterday—showing Victor twisting Clara’s wrist against the marble fountain while holding the aconite laboratory sheet.
The second was the certified cashier’s check for forty-two thousand dollars made out to Halstead Holdings LLC, alongside the original Mercy Hospital wire receipt from two years ago bearing Victor’s personal corporate routing number.
Enzo picked up the photograph and the hospital receipt, his weathered face darkening with fury as he passed them down the table to the other capos.
"He didn't trace the hospital wire to St. Louis," Lucian said, his voice cutting through the room like a razor blade. "Victor paid her father’s medical bills himself two years ago to put an informant inside my house. Only he made one fatal miscalculation. Clara Hayes had more honor in her little finger than he had in fourteen years at this table. When he came here yesterday afternoon while I was downtown and ordered her to poison my evening glass, she refused to touch it."
Lucian reached out and gently lifted Clara’s left arm, pushing back the emerald sleeve of her coat so all five capos could see the four dark purple fingerprints bruised into her pale wrist.
"When she told him no," Lucian continued, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper that made the hairs on every man’s neck stand up, "he grabbed her wrist, gave her forty-five minutes to pack her suitcase, had an accomplice coat my library tumbler with aconite, and sent two of his South Side dock rats to execute her on the five-fifty-five train so she could take the blame for my murder."
"That's a lie!" Victor snarled, panic finally shattering his aristocratic mask as sweat beaded on his upper lip. "Look at him, Enzo! He’s lost his mind over a servant girl! He’s letting a piece of street trash turn him against the man who built his offshore accounts!"
Lucian didn't raise his voice.
Instead, his right hand shot out like a striking viper, seizing Victor’s right wrist and slamming the consigliere’s palm flat against the heavy mahogany tabletop.
Before Victor could scream, Lucian picked up the heavy solid-silver paperweight sitting beside the centerpiece and brought it down with bone-crushing precision across the four fingers of Victor’s right hand.
CRACK.
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Victor let out a high, agonizing shriek, dropping to his knees beside the table as he clutched his shattered hand to his chest.
"Four fingerprints on her skin, Victor," Lucian murmured, tossing the silver paperweight onto the floor beside him and pulling a white silk handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his knuckles. "Four broken bones. Consider that the domestic tax before we get to the treason."
