Chapter 4 - Tonight Everybody Talks
Michael was brought to a private warehouse in Queens shortly before noon.
He looked terrible.
His right wrist was wrapped.
His expensive suit had been replaced by gray sweats.
Vincent sat across from him at a metal table.
Hannah remained near the door.
Michael stared at her.
“Who the hell is she?”
“The woman who stopped you from helping strangers steal my children.”
Michael looked down.
“I told you I didn’t know.”
“You were paid.”
His face drained.
Vincent slid a document across the table.
“$2.4 million.”
Silence.
“Tell me why.”
Michael rubbed both hands over his face.
“My brother owed them money.”
“How much?”
“Almost six million.”
“So you sold access.”
“I gave them schedules.”
“You gave them my home.”
“I didn’t think they’d touch the kids.”
“Stop saying that.”
Michael flinched.
Vincent leaned forward.
“You’re going to tell me everything you know about Roman Volkov.”
“I’ll be dead by tonight.”
“Maybe.”
Michael looked up.
“You’d let them kill me?”
Vincent’s expression was unreadable.
“You brought men to my children’s bedroom.”
Michael began crying.
Not loudly.
That somehow made it worse.
“We were brothers.”
Vincent’s voice cracked for the first time.
Michael covered his face.
“I know.”
“No. You don’t.”
Vincent stood.
“If you knew, you would have come to me broke, terrified, ashamed—whatever you had to be—and asked me to help you.”
Michael’s shoulders shook.
“I would have.”
“You didn’t.”
Hannah watched Vincent walk away.
At the door, Michael called out.
“Vince.”
He stopped.
“The medical facility isn’t at Roman’s house.”
Vincent turned.
Michael looked toward Hannah.
“They built a private clinic beneath an old rehabilitation center outside Stamford. Roman’s been there for three months.”
Hannah immediately opened her laptop.
“Name?”
“Oakridge Recovery Institute.”
She typed.
The facility had officially closed two years earlier.
Yet electrical usage remained enormous.
Private ambulances arrived after midnight.
Security cameras covered every road.
Hannah looked at Vincent.
“He’s there.”
Michael leaned forward.
“If you go after him, he’ll know.”
Vincent answered quietly.
“Good.”
Hannah followed him into the hallway.
“That is an unbelievably stupid plan.”
“He nearly kidnapped my children.”
“Which means you’re emotional.”
“I am a father.”
“Exactly.”
Vincent stopped.
“What would you do?”
“Expose him.”
His expression hardened.
“That’s not enough.”
“It might be worse.”
She showed him the files.
Illegal genetic records.
Bribed hospital employees.
Kidnapping plans.
Shell clinics.
Medical trafficking.
“If Roman disappears, someone replaces him.”
She tapped the screen.
“If this information reaches investigators, regulators, reporters, and every legitimate partner still doing business with him, his entire structure collapses.”
Vincent stared at her.
“You want me to call the police?”
“I want you to stop thinking like a man whose only tool is fear.”
The words hit hard.
She continued.
“You said you wanted out. Start acting like it.”
Silence stretched between them.
Then Vincent asked, “And if the legal system doesn’t move fast enough?”
“We make sure he can’t reach the children while it does.”
“How?”
Hannah’s mouth curved slightly.
“We make Roman believe you’re giving him exactly what he wants.”
That evening, Roman Volkov received a message.
Vincent Moretti was willing to negotiate.
One child would undergo compatibility testing voluntarily.
In exchange, Volkov would end the war against Moretti Maritime.
The meeting would take place at Oakridge.
Roman accepted within eleven minutes.
At 10:40 p.m., Vincent arrived alone.
At least, that was what Roman’s cameras showed.
Vincent walked through three security checkpoints and entered a sterile underground medical suite.
Roman Volkov sat in a wheelchair near the window.
He was sixty-two.
Once broad, now thin.
A wool blanket covered his legs.
“I expected you to be harder to convince,” Roman said.
Vincent stopped ten feet away.
“You threatened my children.”
“I offered you a way to prevent future conflict.”
“You sent kidnappers.”
Roman sighed.
“Morality is luxurious when you’re dying.”
“My children are five.”
“And I am not ready to die.”
Vincent looked at him.
For the first time he saw something unexpected.
Not a monster.
A terrified old man.
That didn’t make what Roman had done forgivable.
It made it pathetic.
“You could have asked.”
Roman smiled.
“Would you have said yes?”
“To testing? Maybe.”
That answer surprised him.
“To kidnapping? Never.”
Roman stared.
Vincent continued.
“You were so convinced everyone thinks like you that you never tried being human first.”
Roman’s smile disappeared.
Then he noticed something.
Vincent wasn’t afraid.
“Where are the children?”
“Safe.”
“Then why are you here?”
Vincent removed a tiny transmitter from his pocket and placed it on the table.
A red light blinked.
Roman went pale.
“What did you do?”
“Everything Hannah told me to.”
Across three states, encrypted files began sending automatically.
To federal investigators.
To medical licensing boards.
To insurance investigators.
To two attorneys representing families whose records had been illegally accessed.
And to every executive whose legitimate company had unknowingly been used as cover for Roman’s operation.
Roman tried to stand.
“You idiot.”
“No.”
Vincent stepped closer.
“For the first time in years, I think I finally did something smart.”
Alarms sounded upstairs.
Roman looked toward the door.
Vincent smiled without warmth.
“You built your empire assuming nobody would ever talk.”
May you like
Footsteps thundered through the hallway.
“Tonight everybody talks.”
