Chapter 5 - A Conversation in the Grand Hotel
The penthouse suite of the Grand Hotel smelled of stale cheap gin, pizza boxes, and arrogance.
Julian Vance was thirty years old, with greasy blonde hair slicked back, wearing a silk shirt that cost more than he had ever earned in a year—courtesy of Falco’s expense account. He was sitting on a plush velvet sofa, counting a stack of hundred-dollar bills, while three armed men in leather jackets sat around the room watching a football game on a flat-screen TV.
"I’m telling you," Julian laughed, flicking a hundred-dollar bill against his thumb, "the moment we get the kid, Duca will drop to his knees. That guy is a sucker for sob stories. My buddy in the kitchen told me he’s got her eating off gold plates!"
"Shut up, Julian," one of the guards muttered, adjusting the shoulder holster under his arm. "Just make sure you sign the custody papers when the lawyer gets here at two."
"Oh, I’ll sign," Julian sneered, pulling a silver toothpick from his pocket. "Elena always thought she was too good for me. Running off to be a maid! Now I get fifty grand, and she gets to rot in a—"
The heavy oak door of the penthouse didn't burst open.
It simply ceased to exist.
A breaching charge exploded with a deafening CRACK, blowing the door frame entirely into the room in a shower of splintered wood and smoke.
Before the smoke could even clear, three flashbang grenades bounced across the hardwood floor, exploding in blinding flashes of white light and thunderous booms.
The three guards screamed, clutching their eyes and ears, staggering blindly across the room.
Through the smoke walked Lorenzo Duca.
He moved like a phantom—silent, precise, and completely untroubled by the noise. He didn't fire a single shot. Behind him, Marco and two Duca enforcers moved in with tactical precision, striking the three disoriented guards with the butts of their shotguns, dropping them unconscious to the floor in less than six seconds.
Julian Vance shrieked, dropping his stack of cash, scrambling backward over the velvet sofa like a terrified crab, his eyes wide and bloodshot.
"W-Who are you?!" Julian screamed, his back hitting the glass doors of the balcony. "I have guards! I’m under the protection of the Rossi family!"
Lorenzo walked over to the sofa, stepped over the unconscious guard lying on the rug, and grabbed Julian by the lapels of his cheap silk shirt.
He lifted him effortlessly, dragging him across the sofa, and slammed him face-first onto the marble coffee table, scattering glass and pizza boxes across the floor.
"Julian," Lorenzo whispered, pressing a heavy knee directly into the center of Julian’s spine until the smaller man groaned in agony. "You smell like bad choices."
"Don't hurt me!" Julian whimpered, his face pressed flat against the cold marble. "I didn't do anything! They paid me! Falco paid me to come here and sign some papers!"
"You abandoned a pregnant woman five years ago," Lorenzo said, his voice terrifyingly calm as he reached into his jacket and pulled out a single sheet of paper—a legal document drafted by his personal attorney an hour ago. "You let her scrub floors to pay off debts you left behind. And now you come back to sell her child for fifty thousand dollars."
"I’m her father!" Julian gasped, trying to turn his head. "I have rights!"
Lorenzo leaned down until his mouth was two inches from Julian’s ear.
"You are nothing," Lorenzo whispered. "You are an insect that crawled out from under a rock because someone dropped a crumb of money."
He smoothed the paper out on the marble table right next to Julian’s bleeding nose, then pressed a silver fountain pen into Julian’s trembling right hand.
"This," Lorenzo explained softly, "is a full, irrevocable relinquishment of all parental rights. It transfers legal guardianship of Clara Vance directly to her mother, Elena, and establishes a permanent restraining order against you in all fifty states."
"I... I won't sign it!" Julian wept. "Falco will kill me if I don't give him the child!"
Lorenzo pulled his Sig Sauer from his holster, racked the slide, and pressed the cold steel barrel directly against the back of Julian’s left kneecap.
"Falco might kill you tomorrow," Lorenzo said. "I will shatter your legs right now. Then I will throw you off this balcony into the street twelve floors below. Choose."
Julian sobbed hysterically, his fingers shaking so violently he could barely hold the pen. "Okay! Okay! I’ll sign! I’ll sign!"
He scribbled his name across the bottom line, the ink smudging against his own blood on the paper.
Lorenzo picked up the document, inspected the signature with a critical eye, and handed it to Marco, who stood nearby holding a notary seal.
"Notarize it, Marco," Lorenzo said.
"Done, Boss," Marco replied, stamping the paper with a heavy brass seal.
Lorenzo pulled Julian up by his collar, dragging him toward the open balcony doors. The cold autumn wind roared around them, rustling the heavy velvet curtains.
"Listen to me very carefully, Julian," Lorenzo said, holding the terrified man over the railing, forty stories above the busy city traffic below. "If I ever see your face in this state again... if you ever breathe Elena’s name, or Clara’s name, to anyone... I won't use a gun. I will let Pino hunt you through the woods for three days. Do you understand me?"
"Yes! Yes! I swear on my life! I’ll leave the country! I’ll go to Mexico!" Julian screamed, clutching Lorenzo’s arms with frantic, desperate strength.
May you like
Lorenzo dropped him onto the concrete floor of the balcony. Julian curled into a tight ball, weeping, shivering in the cold wind.
"Clean this up," Lorenzo told Marco, stepping back inside the penthouse. "And make sure the hotel manager receives fifty thousand for the broken door. We are not savages."
