Chapter 2 - The Sound of Crooked Knuckles
Gordon Vance had spent thirty-four years bullying women in narrow kitchens and throwing punches in waterfront dive bars where men fought with broken bottles. He was accustomed to seeing fear in the eyes of everyone who crossed his path.
He did not see fear in Silas Marcone’s eyes.
He saw nothing at all. It was the terrifying, unblinking void of an industrial machine that simply processed matter without malice or remorse.
"You think you're tough because you wear a thousand-dollar suit?" Gordon sneered, his right fist pulling back, the knuckles knotting as he aimed a vicious haymaker straight at Silas’s chin. "I'll bury you on this floor, old man—"
Silas didn't duck. He didn't flinch.
With blinding, terrifying speed, Silas’s left hand shot out like an iron vice, catching Gordon’s wrist mid-strike.
The impact sounded like two concrete blocks colliding. Gordon’s forward momentum ceased instantly, his arm locked in place as if clamped into a hydraulic press.
Gordon let out a sharp, confused grunt, trying to yank his arm back.
He couldn't move it an inch.
Silas stepped in, closing the distance until Gordon could smell the expensive cedarwood and dark tobacco on the older man’s breath. Silas looked down at Gordon’s right hand—at the old, crooked fracture across the middle knuckle that Nora had feared for three years.
"You gave her that scar on her eyebrow with this hand, didn't you?" Silas asked softly, his gravelly baritone smooth as velvet.
"Let go of me, you crazy bas—"
Silas twisted his wrist.
CRACK.
The sound of Gordon’s radius and ulna snapping under torque was loud enough to make old Mr. Abruzzo drop his head onto his folded newspaper in prayer.
Gordon let out a high-pitched, agonizing shriek that tore through the diner, his knees instantly giving way as he dropped to the floor, clutching his dangling, mangled forearm against his chest, screaming into the puddle of coffee.
Silas did not look down at the screaming man. He turned to booth four.
"Luca. Matteo."
From the shadows near the restrooms, two broad-shouldered men in tailored dark topcoats stepped forward. They had entered the diner twenty minutes before Gordon, sitting in silence, their coffee untouched, their coats unbuttoned over concealed automatic sidearms.
"Boss," Luca said, snapping to attention.
"Take this trash out through the kitchen loading dock," Silas commanded, stepping over Gordon’s writhing form as if he were a sack of rotten potatoes. "Put him in the cold storage cellar at Pier Fourteen. If he bleeds on the delivery vans, have the drivers wash the chassis twice."
"Understood, Don Silas," Matteo said, grabbing Gordon by the scruff of his bomber jacket, hauling the weeping, broken man off the floor with one arm, dragging him toward Benny’s kitchen as Gordon’s heels kicked frantically against the linoleum.
The swinging kitchen doors squeaked shut, cutting off Gordon’s screaming.
The diner was silent once more, save for the hum of the refrigerator and the shallow, ragged breathing of Dolores, who was kneeling beside Nora with a damp bar towel pressed to the young woman’s bleeding temple.
Silas walked over, his heavy coat sweeping back as he dropped to one knee in the puddle of dark coffee and glass shards.
He didn't care about the fabric of his trousers. He didn't care about the stains on his hand-stitched cuffs.
With infinite, breathtaking gentleness, Silas reached out, sliding his large, calloused hand behind Nora’s neck, carefully lifting her head from the floor, resting her cheek against the clean white linen of his handkerchief.
Nora’s eyelids fluttered. A soft, pained whimper escaped her lips as her amber eyes cracked open, swimming through a haze of concussive dizziness.
She saw the ceiling lights. She saw the pink walls of Marchetti's.
Then her vision focused on the face hovering inches above hers—the sharp cheekbones, the gray eyes, the silver-streaked hair, and the thin white scar slicing through his left eyebrow.
"Gordon..." she gasped, her hands coming up frantically, fingers clutching the lapels of his heavy wool coat. "Gordon's here... he found me..."
"Gordon is gone, Nora," Silas murmured, his deep voice dropping into that low, sacred frequency that felt like an iron wall closing around her.
He reached up, his thumb gently wiping away a streak of blood and coffee from her temple.
May you like
"He will never touch you again.
I swear it on the bones of my father."
