Chapter 6 - The War Room
By noon, the small wooden house had been transformed into a command post.
Using the tactical snowmobile left behind by Gus and his partner, Mara had dragged the two bodies into the wood shed behind the house, covering them with heavy canvas and fresh snow to buy them time.
Inside the kitchen, Roman sat in Caleb’s old wooden rocking chair, which Mara had modified by removing the rocker legs and mounting heavy casters to the frame, giving him mobility across the flat floorboards.
Sitting on the table before him was the satellite radio and encrypted tablet taken from Gus’s tactical vest.
Roman’s fingers flew across the screen. Despite his paralysis, his mind remained as sharp and lethal as a grandmaster chess player.
"They're using a private server hosted out of a warehouse in South Albany," Roman analyzed, reading the data streams scrolling across the screen. "Vincent didn't just take my territory, Mara. He took my master ledger—the ledger that contains every political bribe, every dock contract, and every offshore account code for the entire East Coast syndicate."
"Can you access it?" Mara asked, bringing him a cup of hot water.
"I built the encryption myself," Roman said with a grim smile. "Vincent is a blunt instrument. He thinks holding the physical drive means he owns the data. He doesn't know that the primary decryption key is tied to my personal biometric signature."
"Your ring?" Mara asked, pulling the heavy gold signet ring from her pocket.
"My iris scan," Roman corrected, pointing to his dark eye. "He needs me alive to open the final vault. That's why he sent Gus to verify my death instead of coming himself. He was scared."
The satellite radio on the table suddenly buzzed to life with a crackle of static.
"Gus. Report," a harsh, familiar voice demanded through the speaker. Vincent.
Mara gasped, stepping back.
Roman reached out, picking up the radio handset. He didn't hesitate. He pressed the talk button.
"Gus is indisposed, Vincent," Roman said softly.
A suffocating silence fell over the radio line. Three seconds passed. Five seconds.
"Roman?" Vincent’s voice came back, stripped of all its arrogance, replaced by a cold, disbelieving terror. "You're... you're dead. I watched you fall off the ridge."
"You always were a terrible judge of distance, Vincent," Roman replied smoothly. "And an even worse judge of loyalty."
"Where are you?" Vincent demanded, his voice trembling with rage. "I'll send thirty men! I'll tear that mountain apart!"
"You can try," Roman said coldly. "But while you're hunting shadows in the woods, I just uploaded a virus through Gus’s tablet. In ten minutes, every police department, federal prosecutor, and syndicate boss on the East Coast will receive a copy of your private offshore transactions."
"You wouldn't!" Vincent screamed through the speaker. "That destroys the entire family! It destroys everything you built!"
"I didn't build an empire to hand it to a rat," Roman said, his voice dropping into a register that made the quiet kitchen feel cold. "Come to the old paper mill at midnight, Vincent. Alone. Bring the master ledger. Or by sunrise, you won't have a single dollar left to buy a casket."
Roman smashed the radio against the edge of the table, shattering it into pieces.
May you like
Mara stared at him, her eyes wide. "The paper mill? That's... that's where my husband died."
Roman looked at her, his expression softening. "I know, Mara. It's an abandoned site three miles from here. It's ground zero. And tonight... it's where we take your life back."
