Chapter 12 - The Verdict of the Past
Z
Adrian backed up until his heels hit the frame of the open rear window. Behind him, thirty feet down, the dark, turbulent waters of Sheepshead Bay churned against the wooden pilings of the dock.
"Dominic... wait," Adrian whimpered, holding his hands up in a desperate gesture of surrender. His gun had slipped from his nervous fingers, clattering onto the floorboards. "Listen to me! It was Kazakhov! He forced me into this! He was going to kill me in Sicily if I didn't give him the codes!"
I stepped into the room, stepping over Kazakhov’s body without looking down. My gun remained leveled directly at Adrian’s forehead.
"You tried to bomb Marco," I said, my voice eerily calm, devoid of all emotion. "He lost his leg, Adrian. He was like a brother to you."
"I was desperate!" Adrian sobbed, tears cutting clean streaks through the grime on his face. "You took everything from me! You sent me to Sicily with nothing! You left me to rot while you played happy family with that nurse and her bastard kid!"
I stopped five feet from him.
"Her name is Elena," I said softly. "And that child has more honor in her little finger than you have had in your entire wretched life."
"You can't do this, Dominic!" Adrian screamed, his voice cracking with sheer terror. "We're blood! Your father was my uncle! You promised your mother on her deathbed that you would always protect the family!"
"I am protecting the family," I said. "I'm protecting the only family that matters."
I reached into my coat pocket with my left hand. Adrian flinched, expecting another weapon. But when my hand emerged, I was holding the small, damp cloth doll—Miss Rose.
Adrian stared at the toy in confusion, his tear-filled eyes blinking wildly. "What... what is that?"
"This is what you tried to destroy," I said, looking down at the doll's worn fabric. "You thought power was about holding keys to shipping docks and terrifying people in dark rooms. You thought weakness was caring about something small."
I looked up at him, my eyes devoid of mercy.
"You were wrong, Adrian. Weakness is being so terrified of losing your status that you'd sell your own blood to monsters."
Adrian looked at the gun pointed at his head, then down at the dark, freezing water rushing beneath the window behind him. "Dominic... please..."
"Jump," I said.
Adrian blinked. "What?"
"Jump into the bay," I repeated, my voice ice. "The tide is pulling out to the Atlantic. The water is forty degrees. If you survive the swim to the shore, you live. If you don't, the ocean takes you."
"That's death, Dominic! Nobody can swim that far in this cold!"
"Then you had better swim fast," I said, taking one step forward and raising the weapon. "Or I put a bullet in your eye right now."
Adrian looked at my face, realizing with absolute certainty that there was no negotiation left, no slick legal arguments, no appeals to family blood. I was no longer his cousin. I was the judgment he had been running from his entire life.
May you like
With a high-pitched, pathetic shriek of terror, Adrian turned and threw himself backward out the window.
A heavy splash echoed from the darkness below, followed by the sound of frantic, thrashing water. I walked to the sill and looked down into the black abyss. For a few seconds, I saw his head bobbing in the freezing white foam, his arms flailing against the powerful current dragging him out toward the open sea. Then, the thick coastal fog rolled in, swallowing him whole.
