Chapter 5 - The Snake Unmasked
Silas panicked. "Guards! Lock the doors! Seize him!"
The heavy double doors of the ballroom slammed shut. Twenty of Silas's hired mercenaries pulled their weapons, aiming them at the sitting dons and at me.
The visiting bosses scrambled out of their chairs, their own bodyguards drawing pistols in a tense, violent standoff.
"Don't bother calling for backup, Silas," I said calmly, taking a cigar from my pocket and lighting it with a silver lighter. "Marco secured the building ten minutes ago. Every mercenary you placed on the lower floors has been disarmed and placed in federal custody."
Silas’s eyes darted wildly toward the windows. "You're lying!"
"Am I?" I tossed a thick manila folder onto the center of the table. "Inside that folder are the bank records showing the fifteen million dollars you stole from my docks, along with the encrypted emails proving you hired the Russian syndicate to murder Elena and my son a year ago."
Don Moretti picked up the folder, reading through the pages with growing fury. He looked up at Silas with pure disgust. "You tried to murder a Don's wife and child? You broke the sacred code of the council?"
"He didn't just break the code," I added, stepping closer to Silas, my voice dropping into a raspy growl. "He tried to poison me at my own dining table, in front of my four-year-old son."
"He was soft!" Silas suddenly screamed, his composure shattering into wild, desperate rage. "You spent an entire year weeping over a woman and a child! You let our business stagnate while you handed out missing person flyers like a beggar! You were weak, Dominic! The Vale empire needed a real leader!"
"A real leader," I said coldly, "doesn't hide behind poison and hired guns."
Before Silas could react, Marco kicked the ballroom doors open, leading forty loyal Vale soldiers into the room, their assault rifles instantly locking onto Silas’s remaining men.
Seeing that he was completely surrounded, Silas reached into his jacket for a hidden weapon.
BANG.
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A single shot echoed through the ballroom.
I didn't even blink as the bullet from my silver pistol struck Silas directly in the shoulder, knocking him off his feet and slamming him against the marble wall.
