Chapter 16 - The Vault of Secrets
The subterranean vault beneath Pier 14 was a climate-controlled, reinforced concrete bunker built twenty feet below the bed of the East River.
Aleandro and Mia descended the iron ladder slowly, their hands held away from their weapons, surrounded by six heavily armed security operatives wearing Julian Mercer’s corporate insignia.
In the center of the brightly lit vault room stood Julian Mercer, wearing a pristine grey cashmere coat, holding a glass of scotch in one hand and a heavy detonator in the other.
Beside Mercer sat an old, high-backed leather chair.
Sitting in the chair was Don Bernardo Valenti.
In person, the old man looked even more terrifying than he had on the tablet screen. His face was a horrific map of melted skin and white scar tissue, but his posture was regal, terrifying, and ancient.
"Mia," Bernardo rasped, his sightless white eye fixed somewhere past her left shoulder, while his good blue eye locked onto her face with predatory intensity. "You have your mother's eyes. Filthy, disobedient, and weak."
Mia didn't flinch. She stepped forward, standing three feet from the old monster, her chin held high. "I have my mother's blood, Bernardo. The blood you tried to drown in the Palermo harbor."
Bernardo let out a dry, hacking laugh that turned into a cough. "I made your mother! I made your father! And I built the empire that funded this entire miserable city!"
He gestured with his bone-thin, scarred hand toward the rear wall of the vault.
Stacked floor-to-ceiling behind heavy plate glass were hundreds of thick, leather-bound ledgers, legal documents, microfiche reels, and hard drives—the complete recorded history of seventy years of international organized crime and corporate extortion.
"The master ledger," Mercer said smoothly, taking a sip of his scotch. "With this data, my consortium will liquidate every Moretti shell company in Western Europe within forty-eight hours. The federal prosecutors will be forced to unseal thirty indictments against your remaining allies. You're finished, Aleandro."
Aleandro stood beside Mia, his expression completely relaxed, his hands casually tucked into his coat pockets.
"You're very smart, Mr. Mercer," Aleandro said softly. "A brilliant corporate lawyer. But you made one fundamental mistake when you partnered with Don Bernardo."
Mercer frowned, his eyes narrowing slightly. "And what mistake is that?"
"You assumed he wanted the ledger to make money," Aleandro said, stepping an inch closer to Mercer. "Bernardo doesn't care about money. He's eighty-two years old and dying of stage-four lung cancer. Look at his hands, Mercer. The blue spots on his nails. He has two months left to live."
Mercer glanced nervously at Bernardo's thin hands resting on the leather chair arms.
"Bernardo didn't bring you here to rebuild an empire, Mercer," Mia added, her voice dropping into an icy whisper. "He brought you here to be his executioner. He knows that once the ledger is opened, every government in the Western world will launch a full military crackdown on every waterfront in North America. He doesn't want the money. He wants to burn the house down so nobody else can live in it."
Mercer’s hand holding the detonator twitched slightly. For a fraction of a second, doubt flashed across the lawyer's polished face.
"Silence!" Bernardo roared, slamming his fist onto the arm of his chair, coughing violently. "Mercer! Open the glass vault! Take the hard drives!"
"Wait," Mercer said slowly, looking at Bernardo. "Is this true, Bernardo? Is the FBI already watching the pier?"
"I said open the vault, you weak fool!" Bernardo screamed, pulling a small silver pistol from his velvet jacket pocket and aiming it directly at Mercer’s head.
Before Bernardo could pull the trigger, Aleandro moved with terrifying, superhuman speed.
He lunged forward, grabbing Mercer's hand holding the detonator, twisting the lawyer's wrist violently until the bone snapped with a loud CRACK.
Mercer screamed in agony, dropping the detonator.
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Mia grabbed the silver pistol from Bernardo's hand, twisting his arm back, pinning the old man against the back of his high-backed leather chair, pressing the cold barrel of his own gun directly beneath his scarred jawline.
The six security guards raised their assault rifles, but before they could fire, the concrete ceiling of the vault shattered with a deafening explosion.
