Chapter 4 - The Internal Betrayal
The confrontation took place in the grand foyer at two in the morning.
Genevieve Falcone stood by the circular marble table beneath the three-story chandelier, surrounded by four massive leather suitcases. She was dressed in a dark mink coat despite the summer warmth, her face pale but her eyes burning with the arrogant defiance of a woman who belonged to the Lombardi syndicate—the oldest and most vicious family in New York.
“You can’t do this, Adriano,” she hissed as her husband descended the curved staircase. “My father gave you the Providence docks. My uncles control the unions that keep your shipping containers moving. If you throw me out for a backwoods maid and her low-class brat, there will be a war before the sun hits the water.”
Adriano stopped on the bottom step. He didn't look angry; he looked hollowed out, like an old oak tree that had been struck by lightning so many times it had turned to carbon.
“You knew who she was, Genevieve,” Adriano said. “When I spent six hundred thousand dollars on private investigators, when I stayed up until dawn looking at missing persons reports from West Virginia, you were sitting right here, watching me bleed.”
Genevieve laughed, a sharp, bitter sound that echoed off the cold marble walls.
“Of course I knew!” she spat. “My father told me what happened on Route 95. He told me you were going to give half your territory to some mechanic’s widow out of some ridiculous sense of honor. Do you know how pathetic that looks to the other families? A Falcone Don kneeling before a woman who smells of dish soap and old lard?”
She stepped closer, her diamonds flashing in the light.
“I intercepted your checks. I bought out her landlord in West Virginia and had her evicted. I made sure every door in her hometown was shut in her face until she had no choice but to apply to that agency. I wanted her here, Adriano. I wanted her right under my heel so I could remind myself every day of exactly how weak your 'honor' makes you. I enjoyed watching her scrub my floors. I enjoyed seeing her child live in the dark like a rat.”
Adriano didn't move. He didn't raise his hand. He simply turned his head toward Frank, who was standing in the shadows of the dining room.
“Call her father, Lorenzo Lombardi,” Adriano ordered. “Tell him his daughter is being returned to his house in Queens via a standard secure transport van. Tell him that our alliance is canceled as of this breath.”
Genevieve’s defiance cracked. “Canceled? Adriano, you’re insane! Without my father’s protection, the Lucchese family will tear your northern routes to pieces in forty-eight hours!”
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“Let them try,” Adriano said, his voice dropping into that quiet, terrifying register that signaled the start of a massacre. “I survived a burning car because of Thomas Hail. I can survive a few New York soldiers who think they can leverage my life against my soul. Get her out of my sight, Frank.”
Two heavy-set security guards stepped out of the shadows, grabbing Genevieve’s arms. She shrieked, her mink coat slipping from her shoulders as they dragged her through the massive iron front doors into the pouring rain that had just begun to fall over Rhode Island.
