Chapter 27 – Elias
A lot can happen in a day… or two.
Like the downfall of the Empire.
And the death of Giovanni Lenetti.
Noah confronted him at his Lower East Side townhouse, and the moment he confessed, she put a bullet through his head.
Fitting that I had done the same thing to my own father just hours before.
After years of chasing evidence to pin the deaths of the mafia wives and children on Lenetti, we finally got our reason why.
It was all a power move. It was about weakening the other mobs, to have them fear him so the Empire could rise to the top.
Noah’s mother overheard this plan, and she was terrified.
She tried to escape and take Noah away from Lenetti, but when he found out she was trying to leave, he panicked and hired some men to scare her.
But the men weren’t professionals. He hired them off the black market and they went off orders and killed Noah’s mother instead.
They’re the same men who forced Lance to slit our mother’s throat. They’re the same men who set fire to the Lords Mansion and killed Finn O’Connor’s wife and daughter. And they’re the same men Lance later tracked down, captured, tortured, and killed.
Then there’s my father.
His lies.
His betrayal.
Lance told me everything.
How Percy received a large manilla envelope shortly after our mother’s death with information on the men Lenetti hired.
When Percy faked his death, he left us that envelope—but without anything connecting Lenetti to it—so we could only seek our vengeance on those men, but he wanted to be the one to kill Lenetti.
Percy claimed it was revenge for killing Imogen, but he didn’t love our mother. He didn’t mourn her. He mourned his toy. He mourned the control he had over her.
He was pissed because Lenetti took something that belonged to him. So he planned to target Lenetti through Noemi, the little girl who saw her mother killed. Lenetti let everyone believe she died that night too, but Percy had spies embedded in the Empire. He knew she was alive .
Percy’s plan was to kill Noah, then lure Lenetti to our former home in Fresh Meadows and set off the explosives. With Lenetti dead and no heir to leave his Empire, the QBM could rise to the top, especially after the Lords were dismantled.
I may have wanted the Empire and the Lords gone, but I was going to do it the right way. I wasn’t going to end innocent lives over greed. I was going to clean up the corruption.
Percy wouldn’t have allowed it. He would have tried to dethrone me.
Matt was the one who sent Percy the envelope all those years ago with the proof that Lenetti was behind the kill orders. It turned out that he was spying on the Empire and feeding information to Percy. We just haven’t figured out why yet.
It’s now been two days since Lenetti and Percy were killed, and we need more answers.
Lance and I have been beating the shit out of Matt, the double-timing fucker, but he’s held out a lot longer than expected.
Typically, I bring targets to my torture room in the basement of Underground Park Slope, but Lance had a different idea.
We brought him to the near abandoned St. Orion’s Cemetery.
“Talk,” Lance orders .
I pick up my brass knuckles from the top of the empty casket inside a decrepit mausoleum. After slipping it on, I cock my arm back.
“Fuck, okay!” Matt growls.
He’s likely already lost sight in one of his eyes. We’ve cut off a few of his toes as well. We bring him to the brink of passing out then stop, giving him reprieve, only to start up again.
He’s had enough.
“Start from the beginning,” I say.
After a few seconds of silence, Matt talks. “I didn’t want to be an Empire soldier, but I had no choice.”
He’s struggling to breathe, and his words are slow. Lance might have broken a rib. It’s fine. We have time.
“My father got sick, and Gio would only let him out if I took his place. Lenetti threatened to harm my family if I refused. So I accepted. As a rookie, I was ignored for the most part. It allowed me to hide in plain sight. Which meant I heard a lot of things I shouldn’t have.
“A few months after the Christmas Eve murders, I overheard Lenetti bragging about it. I was still furious about being forced to join at eighteen, so I thought I could use this information to my advantage. I snooped for physical proof. Lucky for me, I knew how to pick locks and sure enough, Lenetti was dumb enough to keep files on the men he hired in his safe. I made copies, then anonymously sent them to Percy Carter and Finn O’Connor, and waited for war to break out. Except, it never did.
“Years passed, and my dad got sicker. He had emphysema after being a lifelong smoker. He spent his days gambling, trying to win enough money to pay off hospital bills or buy booze and drugs for the pain. When he spent all our rent money, he went to Lenetti for a loan. But he couldn’t pay Gio back.
Lenetti ordered my mother and sister killed as payment.
I begged Lenetti to let me pay the debt, but he refused. Instead, he beat me for interfering.”
Matt wheezes and inhales as deeply as his body will allow before having a coughing fit and hawking a bloody loogie on the ground.
“Their deaths were the last straw. I wanted revenge, but Elias had just taken over the QBM, and I knew he wouldn’t get involved.
And the Lords were useless. I was ready to give up.
I was going to end my life, so I went to a bar to get wasted first. That’s when I met Percy.
He was still alive. He’d been following me because he recognized me as an Empire soldier.
He knew what Gio had done to my family and used that to his advantage.
“I became Percy’s spy. He already suspected Noemi was still alive, and I confirmed it, but Lenetti hid her well.
We never could find her location. Then last year at the end of August, Gio comes to me saying Noemi is moving back, but her name’s Noah now.
He tasked me with finding her a place to live after she refused to move into his townhouse with him.
I was also keeping tabs on Lance for Percy so I knew I needed Noah to move into his building so I could watch them both.
“Percy found out Lance had become obsessed with Noah—the enemy’s daughter—so he had me hire men to kill you two in an ‘accidental’ building explosion.”
“You sent Finn O’Connor those pictures of me and Noah outside Cillian’s apartment the night Noah killed him, didn’t you?” Lance asks.
Matt coughs up more blood.
“Yeah. After you two survived the explosion, Percy was hoping Finn would take you two out himself.”
“Wasn’t Percy’s plan to use Noah as bait to lure her father out to the Fresh Meadows home to kill him?” I ask. “How would that have worked if Noah died in the explosion or if Finn took her out?”
Matt shrugs. “Fuck if I know. The man claimed to know what he was doing, but I think he’d lost his fucking mind. He got desperate there at the end.”
“I’ve heard enough.” Lance sighs and turns to me. “I’m going to bring Noah back here. She needs to hear all this herself. Maybe she can get more out of him too.”
He clamps my shoulder.
“You good?”
I nod. “I have questions for him, but I’ll keep him alive.”
Once Lance is gone, I face Matt.
“What do you know about a man named Moonlight?”
M att was more than happy to give up information on Chase.
I didn’t even have to torture him, and I almost felt bad for the fucker for what Lenetti did to him, but he felt absolutely no remorse for partnering with my father and putting Lance and Noah through hell.
Matt said Percy was working with a man named Moonlight.
God, I still can’t stand that name.
Percy apparently saw the potential in Chase and put him in charge of human trafficking.
It’s how my father had been making money since faking his death all those years ago.
He slowly built a customer base in the states along the Gulf of Mexico, but he needed to move his operations to the East Coast.
Chase already had connections with the Lords who funded trafficking operations and supplied buyers.
Turns out, Chase was double timing Finn O’Connor and my father.
He’d been building a repertoire with powerful people and planned to cut out Finn—which we did for him—and then my father—which I also did for him.
Matt said he couldn’t stand Moonlight. He said Chase was cocky and reckless.
Especially since he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about wanting to take down the Empire and the QBM to form his own crime syndicate.
My father either didn’t care that Chase was aiming for the QBM, or he didn’t believe Chase would succeed with his plan, and let the man continue to run the shipments.
It’s because he was making a shit ton of money. He wasn’t going to kill his cash cow.
Luckily for me, Chase didn’t know Percy was dead so when I used my father’s phone to set up a meeting with the fucker, he didn’t hesitate to accept.
I pull into the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in the SUV my father had been using and drive to a secluded area with shattered streetlights and an abandoned warehouse full of broken windows.
Where sketchy deals, assaults, and murders happen.
I spot Chase standing near the water’s edge, smoking a cigarette. He’s got two men with him.
“That’s unexpected,” Jax says from the passenger seat. “Thought we captured all his men.”
“Me too.”
Clearly, I’ve underestimated this fucker.
I bring the car to a stop far enough that when I get out, he won’t know it’s me. For once, being a near spitting image of my father is to my advantage .
“Percy, Percy, Percy,” Chase says the moment he spots me walking toward him. “Or should I say, Elias Carter.”
I stop in my tracks and reach for my gun.
“I wouldn’t.”
The two men standing behind him move to the side.
They have Sage.
I nearly collapse to my knees—my heart stopping for a second before it revs up in fear.
My Reine.
My fiancée.
Captured by this asshole.
How?
“Let her go, Moonlight. This won’t end well for you.”