Chapter 2 - The Mulberry Street Vault
The air inside the Mulberry Street refinery was thick with the scent of unrefined molasses, damp concrete, and eighty years of old blood. The building had been constructed in the 1920s as a front for the family’s bootlegging operations, its three-foot-thick brick walls designed to muffle the sound of automatic gunfire and the screams of rival enforcers who had crossed the Marchetti threshold.
Logan walked into the third-floor boardroom at precisely five minutes to three. The room was illuminated by long, industrial fluorescent bulbs that hummed like a nest of hornets. Sitting around the massive oak table were the six capos of the New York factions—men with weathered faces and heavy gold rings, their eyes darting between the empty chair at the head of the table and Logan as he took his seat at the right hand of power.
At three o'clock, the heavy iron-reinforced door at the back of the room swung open.
Vincent Marchetti walked in. At sixty-eight, he was a massive, bear-like man with a mane of silver hair and a face that looked like it had been carved out of granite by a blunt chisel. He wore a five-thousand-dollar silk suit that did nothing to hide the heavy, brutal sloping of his shoulders. Behind him stood his primary enforcer, a silent, hollow-eyed Sicilian named Gianni who had carried out Vincent’s personal mandates since the days of the old Commission.
Vincent didn't take his seat immediately. He walked over to Logan, his large, calloused hand coming down on Logan’s shoulder with a weight that would have broken a lesser man’s collarbone.
"Logan," Vincent rumbled, his voice like stones grinding together in a cement mixer. "You look tired, kid. Marcus tells me you took a drive up to Greystone yesterday. Eight years since Elena went into the water, and you still go up there to talk to the trees? It’s not healthy for the boss of this family to be looking at the past."
Logan didn't flinch. He looked up, his winter-gray eyes meeting his uncle’s gaze with a stillness that made the surrounding captains subtly shift their weight in their chairs. "The past has a habit of staying green in the valley, Uncle. The rain up there washes away a lot of things, but it doesn't wash away the stone."
Vincent’s fingers tightened on Logan’s shoulder for a fraction of a second—a warning pressure that Logan had felt a thousand times since his father’s death—before the older man let out a booming, false laugh and took his seat at the head of the table.
"Alright, boys," Vincent said, leaning forward, his large elbows resting on the oak wood. "We have a rat in the kitchen. Someone within the Greene County distribution grid cleared out three of our transport accounts in Zurich last night. Six million dollars. Gone before the bank managers could verify the signatures."
The capo from the Brooklyn faction, an aging soldier named Tommy Bruno, frowned. "Who has that kind of access, Vincent? Those accounts are locked under the old protocol. You need the family seal and the primary biometric key."
"The primary key belonged to my brother," Vincent said, his eyes narrowing as they drifted slowly toward Logan. "And when my brother died, his assets were supposed to clear into the central ledger. But it seems someone held onto a duplicate. Someone who thinks they can run a parallel operation under my nose."
Logan leaned back in his chair, weaving his fingers together over his chest. "If someone has my father’s duplicate, Uncle, then they’ve been sitting on it for twelve years. Why use it now? Why clear six million dollars on the exact day the Hudson Valley routes are being re-audited?"
Vincent’s face didn't change, but the muscle along his left temple gave a sharp, involuntary twitch. "Maybe they needed the money to buy a ticket out of the country, Logan. Maybe they found something they weren't supposed to find, and they think six million is enough to buy their safety from the Marchetti family."
He stood up, his massive frame casting a long, dark shadow over the length of the table. "Gianni is taking twenty men upstate tonight. We’re going to clean out every house, every cabin, every hunting lodge between Poughkeepsie and Albany. If someone is breathing in our woods without my permission, they’re going into the river before the sun comes up tomorrow."
Logan remained motionless as the room cleared, the captains scurrying out like rats sensing a fire in the hold. Only Vincent and Gianni remained.
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"Logan," Vincent said, stepping closer to his nephew until the scent of his expensive cologne and stale cigar smoke was suffocating. "You're a good boy. You’ve done well since you took the big chair. But remember who put you there. Your father was soft. He thought he could turn this family into a legitimate real estate firm. If I hadn't stepped in when the Commission went to war in ninety-eight, your name would be nothing but a footnote on a police blotter."
"I remember exactly what you did, Uncle," Logan said softly, his voice dropping into that rhythmic, lethal whisper that Marcus knew signaled a death warrant. "I remember every single thing."
