Chapter 9 – THE RED LEDGER

The mansion was a warzone.

The deafening roar of automatic gunfire echoed through the grand marble hallways. The expensive vases and crystal chandeliers Margaret had so carefully curated were shattering into a million pieces.

I crept through the servant’s corridors, keeping my flashlight off, navigating the darkness entirely by memory.

I heard men shouting in Italian in the grand foyer.

I slipped into Vincent’s study through the hidden library door. The room had been ransacked. Books were torn from the shelves, the desk overturned.

But the small, locked bottom drawer of the desk was still intact.

I grabbed a heavy bronze bookend and smashed the wooden drawer. It splintered open.

Inside lay the small red ledger.

I grabbed it and flipped it open, using the faint moonlight streaming through the window to read the pages.

My breath caught in my throat.

It wasn’t just a list of bribes. It was a list of FBI badge numbers, dates, and payout amounts.

Don Carmine, the ruthless head of the Commission, the man who demanded absolute loyalty and silence… had been an FBI informant thirty years ago. He had sold out rival families to consolidate his own power, and Joseph Salvatore had found out.

That was why Joseph was never touched by the Commission. He had been holding a gun to Carmine’s head for three decades.

“Well, look what we have here.”

I spun around.

Standing in the doorway of the study was a massive man holding a shotgun, grinning maliciously.

I didn’t think. I reacted.

I threw the bronze bookend squarely at his face. It hit him in the nose with a sickening crunch.

He stumbled backward, dropping the shotgun.

I sprinted past him, clutching the red ledger to my chest, bolting down the main hallway toward the grand foyer.

But as I reached the top of the grand staircase, I stopped cold.

The foyer was lit by the headlights of the trucks parked outside the shattered front doors.

Dozens of dead and wounded men littered the marble floor.

But in the center of the room, on his knees, was Vincent.

He was bleeding from a cut above his eye, his gun empty and discarded on the floor.

Surrounding him were twenty of Carmine’s soldiers, their rifles aimed directly at Vincent’s head.

Standing in front of Vincent was Don Carmine himself. A short, impeccably dressed man in his seventies, holding a gold-plated revolver.

“You fought well, Vincent,” Carmine said, his voice rasping like sandpaper. “But you broke the rules. You brought the feds into our business. For that, you die. And then, my men will find your little maid and the old driver, and they will die too.”

Carmine raised the gold revolver, aiming it right between Vincent’s eyes.

Vincent didn’t flinch. He looked Carmine dead in the eye.

“Do it,” Vincent spat.

Carmine’s finger tightened on the trigger.

“Wait!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Every gun in the room immediately snapped up, aiming at me as I stood at the top of the stairs.

Vincent’s head whipped around. “Emily, no! Run!”

I didn’t run. I slowly walked down the grand staircase, my hands raised, holding the small red ledger high in the air.

“Don’t shoot her!” Carmine barked, narrowing his eyes at the book in my hand. “What is that, girl?”

I reached the bottom of the stairs and stood directly beside Vincent. I could feel the heat radiating off his body.

“It’s Joseph Salvatore’s insurance policy,” I said, my voice remarkably steady for someone staring at twenty guns.

I tossed the red ledger onto the marble floor at Carmine’s feet.

“Pick it up,” I challenged the most dangerous man in New York.

Carmine sneered, gesturing for one of his men to hand him the book.

Carmine opened it.

I watched the color completely drain from his face. The arrogant, untouchable mafia boss suddenly looked like a terrified old man.

“Thirty years ago,” I said loudly, ensuring every one of his loyal soldiers heard me. “You sold out the Moretti family to the FBI to take their territory. You’re an informant, Carmine. A rat.”

The soldiers around the room exchanged confused, uneasy glances. A rat leading the Commission was a death sentence for Carmine if the other families found out.

“You lying bitch,” Carmine hissed, his hands shaking as he gripped the ledger.

“If you kill us,” Vincent spoke up, finally understanding what I had done. He slowly stood up, towering over Carmine. “My automated servers will email copies of that ledger to every rival boss in the Five Boroughs. They will tear you and your family to pieces by morning.”

Carmine stared at Vincent, pure hatred burning in his eyes.

“What do you want?” Carmine ground out.

Vincent looked at me. Then he looked around his destroyed mansion.

“I want out,” Vincent said.

Carmine frowned. “Out?”

“I dissolve the Salvatore syndicate tonight,” Vincent declared, his voice echoing in the ruined foyer. “I surrender my territory, my casinos, and my docks to the Commission. You can have it all.”

Carmine looked skeptical. “In exchange for what?”

“In exchange for our lives,” Vincent said. “You take your men and you leave my property. You never come near me, my sister, Arthur, or Emily ever again. If you do, the ledger goes public, and you die screaming.”

Carmine weighed the options. He was being offered a massive empire without a war, and the preservation of his deepest secret.

Carmine closed the red ledger and tucked it into his coat.

“You’re a civilian now, Vincent,” Carmine spat. “If I ever see your face in this city again, I’ll kill you myself.”

Carmine turned to his men. “Stand down. We’re leaving.”

Like ghosts, the soldiers filed out the broken front doors, piling into their trucks and disappearing into the night.

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