Chapter 9 - THE LAST CASTELLANO WAR
The tracker stopped at the old Castellano shipping warehouse near the river.
The same warehouse where Gabriel had supposedly died nine years earlier.
Deari understood the symbolism.
“He wants it to end where it started.”
Kalista looked at him.
“Then let’s disappoint him.”
They did not arrive with an army.
That was what Gabriel expected.
Instead, Leonardo contacted federal investigators using Thomas’s evidence.
Kalista transmitted copies of every file to three separate news organizations with timed-release instructions.
If anything happened to her, the entire archive would become public.
For the first time, Gabriel could not solve his problem with murder.
Deari entered the warehouse alone.
Gabriel waited beside the burned remains of the old office.
“You brought police.”
“Eventually.”
Gabriel laughed.
“Father would be disgusted.”
“Father is dead.”
“Because of you.”
Deari stopped.
Gabriel smiled.
There was the final secret.
Their father’s fatal heart attack had not been natural.
Gabriel had manipulated his medication through a bribed nurse.
Leonardo heard the confession through Deari’s wire.
His face went white.
Deari stood motionless.
“You killed him.”
“He had already chosen you.”
“He was our father.”
“He was your father.”
Gabriel’s voice cracked.
For the first time, Deari saw what his brother had become.
Not a mastermind.
Not a rival king.
A wounded boy who had spent decades demanding that the world compensate him for never being chosen first.
Gabriel drew a gun.
“You took everything.”
Deari shook his head.
“No. You threw everything away because you couldn’t stand that someone else had something too.”
Gabriel fired.
Deari moved.
The bullet struck metal.
Deari tackled him.
They crashed onto the concrete.
Years of rage erupted between them.
Gabriel struck Deari with the pistol.
Deari drove him against a steel column.
The gun skidded away.
Gabriel reached for a knife.
Then Kalista’s voice rang across the warehouse.
“Enough.”
She stood near the entrance.
Gabriel laughed.
“You really do have terrible survival instincts.”
Kalista held Thomas’s ledger.
“You want this?”
Gabriel’s expression changed.
She walked toward an industrial furnace.
“Kalista,” Deari warned.
Gabriel lunged.
She threw the ledger into the fire.
“No!”
Gabriel ran toward it.
That was the mistake.
Deari disarmed him.
Leonardo entered with federal agents seconds later.
Gabriel stared at the flames.
“You destroyed the evidence.”
Kalista smiled.
“No.”
She held up her phone.
“I digitized it days ago.”
Leonardo laughed.
Even Deari smiled.
Gabriel was arrested.
So was Valdemar, who survived his wounds and discovered that several of his own lieutenants had begun cooperating with prosecutors.
Patrick Rourke was captured attempting to cross into Canada.
Within seventy-two hours, dozens of officials named in Thomas’s files were under investigation.
The criminal architecture Thomas had died trying to expose began collapsing.
But victory had a cost.
Deari stood alone inside the empty Cobalt Room four days later.
The broken window had been replaced.
The blood was gone.
The Persian rug had not survived.
Kalista entered.
“You’re closing it.”
“Yes.”
“The club?”
“The organization.”
She stared at him.
Deari looked around the room.
“I spent my entire adult life believing power was the only thing keeping my family alive.”
He looked at her.
“It nearly killed all of us instead.”
Leaving would not be simple.
There were legitimate businesses to separate from criminal ones.
Employees to protect.
Authorities to negotiate with.
Consequences to accept.
But Deari had already begun.
Kalista approached him.
“What happens to you?”
“I cooperate. My attorneys believe the evidence against Gabriel and Valdemar, combined with what I provide, gives prosecutors reason to negotiate.”
“You might still lose everything.”
Deari smiled faintly.
“Not everything.”
Kalista understood.
She moved closer.
Then her phone rang.
Unknown number.
Her smile vanished.
She answered.
No one spoke.
Then a recording played.
Thomas’s voice.
“Kalista, if you’re hearing this, you found the last file.”
She stopped breathing.
Deari stared at her.
Thomas continued.
“There’s one thing I never told you.”
Kalista’s eyes filled.
“I knew you would come after the truth. So I left something behind that has nothing to do with Valdemar.”
A location followed.
A bank vault in Chicago.
Kalista looked at Deari.
May you like
The war was over.
But Thomas still had one final secret waiting for his sister.
