Chapter 131 - The Iron Threshold
The ferry shuddered as its heavy steel hull nudged against the pilings of the slip at Villa San Giovanni on the mainland. Horns blared from the lower deck; commercial drivers turned over their diesel engines, filling the cavernous cargo bay with white exhaust and mechanical clamor.
Sarah looked at the glowing screen of the satellite phone in my hand. Her hazel eyes widened with horror, her hand flying to her mouth. "The children... Arthur’s grandchildren. They went back to America for them."
"They didn't go back to America," Patrice said, his tactical instincts razor-sharp. "Rossi didn't send men across the Atlantic today. He already had local muscle waiting in New England from the moment Box 402 was liquidated. He kept them in reserve as leverage in case the sweep in Sicily went sideways."
Clara stood beside her mother, her small jaw trembling, though she tried desperately to keep her tears from falling. "Aunt Martha... what are we going to do?"
I looked down at the envelope in my hands. Inside lay the legal destruction of Marc Rossi’s empire—the paperwork that would strip him of his wealth, his ports, and his freedom, delivering him into the hands of French prosecutors. It was thirty years of Eleanor’s suffering, thirty years of Sarah’s exile, thirty years of my own quiet, stubborn defiance, bound in yellowed paper and wax.
And in Vermont, two young boys who barely understood why their grandmother had refused to watch them while their mother flew to Tokyo were currently sitting in the dark, terrified, with guns pointed at their heads because of a grandfather they had never known.
"Patrice," I said, my voice dropping into a register so cold and steady that even Julien looked up in alarm.
"I'm listening, Martha."
"What is the fastest way to get from Reggio Calabria to a private runway?"
"There's an executive charter strip ten miles south," Patrice answered immediately. "I have contacts in Naples who can clear a transoceanic Gulfstream off the radar if we wire the fuel deposit in Swiss francs."
"Do it," I said.
Sarah reached out, grabbing my wrist with sudden, desperate strength. "Martha, if you take the Bastia deed back to Maine, Rossi will kill you the moment you land. You can't fight them on Arthur’s ground—Arthur built that county to protect himself, not you!"
"I am not fighting them on Arthur’s ground," I replied, pulling my wrist free and looking out across the graying waters of the strait toward the approaching docks. "Arthur is dead. His empire is rotted out. And those men in Vermont made one fatal mistake."
"What mistake?" Sarah asked.
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"They forgot that I didn't leave Camden because I was afraid of Arthur Vance," I said, reaching down to take Clara's trembling hand into mine. "I left because I was the only one who knew where he hid the dynamite."
The ferry ramp dropped with a deafening crash of iron on concrete, and the truck lurched forward into the shadows of the mainland.
