Chapter 5 - The Ashford Ultimatums
The truce was officially dead.
The next morning, a heavily sealed envelope arrived at the gates of the Hail estate via a neutral courier. Wesley brought it directly to Garrett’s study, where Garrett sat reviewing territory maps with his top lieutenants.
Garrett opened the envelope. Inside was a single photograph of the Queens apartment building where Maeve and Clara had lived, surrounded by scorched earth, and a handwritten note from Julian Ashford:
Hail, You humiliated my daughter and broke our holy covenant for a gutter girl. Return the child to us as collateral, surrender your Brooklyn docks, and execute the woman who ruined our treaty. Do this by midnight, or we bring the entire Tri-State alliance down upon your head.
Garrett crumpled the note in his fist, his expression turning into an unreadable mask of ice.
"Boss," his chief lieutenant, Dominic, warned. "Julian Ashford has rallied the Moretti and Vance families behind him. They view your rejection of the wedding as a threat to all the old families. We are outnumbered three to one."
"Then we won't fight them with numbers," Garrett said coldly. "We'll fight them with secrets."
"What are you planning?" Wesley asked.
Garrett stood up, walking toward his safe behind the oak bookcase. "My mother wasn't the only one keeping secrets. Before old man Ashford died, he left ledger copies detailing Julian's illegal offshore weapons sales—sales that violated the alliance's charter."
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He unlocked the heavy steel safe and pulled out a thick black leather binder.
"Julian wants a war?" Garrett murmured, his winter-gray eyes flashing with lethal intelligence. "I’m going to tear his empire down from the inside out."
