Chapter 19 - The Reckoning
Julian twisted her wrist away from his coat, pushing her backward until she stumbled and fell onto the plush cushions of the bedroom sofa.
Rosalind looked up at him, her mask of tragic, conflicted love shattering instantly into a visage of pure, venomous, unadulterated hatred.
“You should have died in Miami, you arrogant son of a bitch!” she screamed, her eyes wild with rage as she glared at him.
“My father was twice the man you will ever be! You are nothing but a common street thug who got lucky with a gun!”
Julian looked at her without a single trace of anger, pity, or sorrow; she was no longer his wife, nor was she a human being he recognized.
She was simply the final piece of biological debris left behind by an old war he had won five years ago.
“You are right about one thing, Rosa,” Julian said quietly, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his secondary satellite communicator.
“I am a street thug who knows how to survive, and that is why I am standing here while your entire bloodline is extinguished.”
He tapped a single button on the communicator, sending a pre-arranged transmission signal to the perimeter forces waiting outside the mansion.
Two minutes later, the heavy bedroom doors opened, and four federal agents wearing tactical FBI windbreakers stepped into the room.
They were led by Assistant United States Attorney Elena Rostova, who looked around the blood-stained, shattered gallery hallway with cold professional approval.
“You kept your word, Moretti,” Elena said, stepping over the threshold and looking down at the woman cowering on the sofa.
“The political corruption files on the drive you gave me have already led to five federal bench warrants across the state this morning.”
Rosalind stared at the federal agents in absolute shock, her face turning pale as ashes as she realized the true nature of her fate.
“You're giving me to the feds?!” she screamed at Julian, her voice cracking with terror as two agents grabbed her arms and pulled her up.
“I am giving you to a federal supermax facility in Colorado under special administrative terrorism restrictions,” Julian replied coldly, turning his back to her.
“You will spend the next fifty years in a solitary concrete cell without windows, without mirrors, and without a single soul ever hearing your name again.”
“Julian! No! Shoot me!” Rosalind screamed hysterically as the federal agents clapped heavy steel cuffs around her delicate wrists.
“Shoot me like you shot my father! Don't leave me in a cell, Julian! Look at me! Look at me!”
Julian did not turn around; he stood by the window looking out over the snowy estate as her screams echoed down the staircase and faded away.
He had not given her the dignity of a bullet, nor the quick, merciful release of a mobster’s execution on the bedroom floor.
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He had stripped her of her beauty, her luxury, and her freedom, leaving her to rot in the silent darkness she had tried to condemn him to.
The castle was finally clean.
