She Joked That Everyone Forgot Her Birthday / Chapter 6 / 60

Chapter 6 - The Council of the Harbor

The temperature in the alley felt like it dropped twenty degrees the second Nicholas turned his back on Sophie.

Salvatore stood frozen against the brick wall, his hands raised high above his shoulders, his face the sickly, translucent shade of wet skim milk. The two men who had accompanied him were on their knees in the slush, their weapons kicked away by Marco’s boots, surrounded by six shotguns pointed at the bases of their skulls.

"Nicholas," Salvatore choked out, his voice cracking into reedy, pathetic terror. "It... it was just a warning! The commission told us to test your perimeter! We weren't going to hurt her!"

Nicholas took two slow, measured strides forward, stopping six inches from Salvatore.

He raised the SIG Sauer, pressing the warm steel barrel directly against the center of Salvatore’s forehead, right between his terrified, twitching eyes.

"You laid a hand on a woman under my protection, Salvatore," Nicholas whispered, every word falling with the clean, terrifying finality of a guillotine blade dropping into an oiled groove.

"You brought three guns into a street where she walks home from work.

And you told her you wanted to have a conversation about the docks."

"Nicholas, please!" Salvatore wept, his knees buckling until he was hanging supported only by the brick wall behind him. "The old families! You need the commission's approval to execute a capo! If you kill me here, you start a war across the entire Eastern Seaboard!"

Nicholas leaned in closer, his winter-blue eyes blazing with an unshakeable, sovereign fury.

"I am not starting a war, Salvatore," Nicholas murmured into his ear.

"I am finishing an audit."

Nicholas pulled the trigger.

CLICK.

The hammer fell on an empty chamber.

Salvatore let out a raw, broken shriek, collapsing onto his hands and knees in the dirty snow, gasping for air as if his lungs had collapsed.

Nicholas lowered the weapon, ejecting the magazine into his palm with a flick of his thumb, catching the brass rounds as they tumbled out.

"Marco," Nicholas commanded without looking back.

"Boss?"

"Take Mr. Salvatore to the terminal at Berth Nine," Nicholas said, his tone clinical and absolute.

"Inform the commission that as of eight o'clock tonight, the South Boston logistics franchise has been permanently annexed by the Falcone family.

Inform them that every warehouse, every cold-storage slip, and every commercial rail line controlled by the Vanguard syndicate is forfeited to cover the cost of Miss Carter’s dry-cleaning."

Nicholas pointed down at the enforcer whose nose Sophie had shattered with the compass.