Epilogue #5
"Started seeing extra muscle about two weeks ago. Philadelphia tags, mostly. Hard boys—the kind you import when you're expecting trouble." Stevedore's jaw tightened. "He's also been using our contacts to move product. Nothing heavy, but enough to make people think he's got reach he doesn't have."
"That ends today." Verdict didn't raise his voice. Didn't need to. "Dredge, I want eyes on Marchetti's crew. Where they sleep, where they eat, who they talk to. Everything."
"Done."
"Beltway, pull together what we have on his operation. Money flow, properties, the Philadelphia connection. I want to know what he's building and how to tear it down."
"On it."
Verdict stood. The brothers stayed seated—they knew he wasn't finished.
"Marchetti thinks we're a neighborhood nuisance," he said.
"He's been operating near our territory for years, and we've let him because he wasn't worth the trouble.
That made him comfortable. Comfortable made him stupid.
Now he's burning trucks six blocks from our compound and importing muscle through our port. "
He let that sink in.
"This isn't about a diner. This is about what happens when someone thinks they can operate in Killers territory without permission. We let this slide, next month it's someone else. Someone bigger. Someone who watched us do nothing and decided we're soft."
Cull's hands flexed on the table. "So we hit him. Tonight. Put his whole crew in the harbor and be done with it."
"Not yet." Verdict shook his head. "Marchetti's got deep roots and deeper pockets. We hit him too hard, too fast, he brings in more Philadelphia muscle, maybe calls in favors from Jersey. This gets bloody, it gets prolonged, and we spend the next six months at war instead of making money."
"Then what?" Formstone asked.
"We start with the woman." Verdict headed for the door. "She's the reason Marchetti's making noise. He needs that corner for something—Beltway, find out what—and she's in the way. That makes her our business now."
"You want me to send someone?" Dredge asked.
"No." Verdict paused at the chapel door. "I'll handle it myself."
Dredge raised an eyebrow. The VP was too smart to question Verdict's decisions in front of the brothers, but the look said plenty.
Why you? Why not send Formstone or one of the enforcers?
Verdict didn't answer. Didn't need to.
Rosa Delgado had stood up to Victor Marchetti four times. She'd served two tours in a war zone and come home to save a failing diner through sheer force of will. A woman like that wouldn't listen to an enforcer. Wouldn't trust a stranger in a Killers cut just because he said the right words.
She'd need to see authority. The real thing. The man who made the decisions.
And maybe—though Verdict wasn't ready to admit it, even to himself—maybe he wanted to see for himself what kind of woman told a Marchetti to go to hell.
"Church dismissed." He pushed through the door into the main room. "Dredge, I want that surveillance up by tonight. Beltway, property intel by morning. The rest of you—business as usual until I say otherwise."
The brothers filed out, heading for coffee or their bikes or the garage where half-finished projects waited. Verdict grabbed his cut from the hook by the bar, shrugged it on, felt the familiar weight settle across his shoulders.
Forty-three years old. Eighteen years since he'd buried his father and watched his mother lose everything to a system that was supposed to protect them.
Twelve years since he'd founded this club with nothing but rage and a handful of men who understood what it meant to be abandoned by the people who were supposed to have your back.
The Killers had grown since then. Controlled territory, ran operations, made money. But the core hadn't changed. They protected the people Baltimore's institutions threw away.
Rosa Delgado didn't know it yet, but she was one of those people now.
Verdict walked out into the Fell's Point morning, sea air and diesel and the distant cry of gulls. His Harley waited in the lot, chrome gleaming in the pale sunlight. He threw a leg over, kicked the engine to life, felt the rumble settle into his bones like a second heartbeat.
Highlandtown was a fifteen-minute ride through harbor traffic. He could've sent Cull. Could've delegated to any of a dozen brothers who'd handle it clean and professional.
But Marchetti had gotten comfortable. That meant the Killers had been too quiet for too long. Time to remind Baltimore who ran these streets.
And something else. Something he wasn't willing to examine too closely.
The woman who'd told Victor Marchetti to go to hell four times. Who'd served in combat zones and come home to flip burgers in her grandmother's diner. Who'd watched everything she'd built threatened and didn't break.
Verdict wanted to meet her.
He pulled out of the compound lot, V-twin echoing off Fell's Point brick and cobblestone, and pointed his bike toward Highlandtown.
Time to introduce himself.