Chapter 5 - The Glass Penthouse
At 3:45 a.m., the high-rise residential tower at 400 Riverside Drive stood like a silver needle against the black city sky. The top floor was a double-story penthouse with floor-to-ceiling glass walls offering an unobstructed view of the Hudson River and the sprawling city lights below.
Inside, Sabrina Voss was pacing frantically across the white marble floor of her living room.
She had abandoned her charcoal dress for a simple pair of black trousers and a cashmere sweater. Two oversized leather suitcases sat open near the entrance, stuffed with designer clothes, jewelry, and stacks of banded hundred-dollar bills pulled from her home safe.
Her phone was pressed to her ear.
"Pick up, damn you," she muttered under her breath, her fingernails digging into the casing.
The line clicked open. A smooth, heavily accented voice answered. "Miss Voss. It is late."
"Julian," Sabrina said, her voice frantic, losing all its previous composure. "Roman knows. He found out about the East District shipments. He took my father."
A brief silence followed on the line. Julian Moretti, the second-in-command of the southern syndicate, took a slow breath. "How much does he know?"
"I don't know!" she hissed, running a hand through her disheveled hair. "He had financial documents! He had legal injunctions already prepared! That bitch Naomi... she did something before she died. She set up a trust that locked everything down!"
"And your father?" Julian asked coldly. "Did he speak?"
"I don't know where he is! Roman’s men dragged him out of the estate an hour ago! You need to send a extraction team to my penthouse right now! I have the access codes to Roman’s private shipping routes in the North Harbor. I can give you everything, but you have to get me out of the city tonight!"
"The access codes," Julian mused. "You have the hard tokens?"
"Yes! In my safe! Just get your men here!"
"Ten minutes," Julian said, and hung up.
Sabrina let out a long, ragged breath. She tossed her phone onto the glass coffee table and hurried toward her master bedroom to retrieve the encrypted drive containing the shipping data.
As she reached the bedroom threshold, the lights in the entire penthouse flickered once, then went completely dark.
The soft hum of the air conditioning died. The background buzz of the wine fridges vanished. The room was plunged into near-total blackness, lit only by the ambient gray glow of the rain hitting the glass walls outside.
Sabrina froze. "What the..."
She reached for her phone on the coffee table, but as her fingers touched the glass surface, she heard a sound that made her blood run cold.
It was the quiet, rhythmic click of heavy leather shoes stepping out from the shadows near the balcony entrance.
"The power grid for this building runs on three backup circuits," a voice spoke from the darkness—a voice that was low, calm, and utterly familiar. "It took my team four minutes to bypass the main transformer in the basement."
A match was struck. A small flame flickered in the dark, illuminating the sharp, cut-glass jawline of Roman D’Angelo. He held the flame to the end of a thin cigar, took a slow drag, and blew a plume of white smoke into the cold air.
Sabrina backed away, her hands searching blindly behind her for something—anything—to use as a weapon. Her back hit the frame of the glass door leading to the terrace.
"Roman..." she breathed, her voice barely a squeak. "How... how did you get in here?"
"Your private security team at the front desk was loyal to your father's payroll," Roman said, stepping into the dim gray light provided by the city below. "They were very cooperative once Leo explained the situation."
Behind Roman, three tall silhouettes detached themselves from the darkness of the foyer. None of them spoke. They simply formed a wall blocking her only path to the front entrance.
"Roman, please, listen to me," Sabrina stammered, her hands pressing against the cold glass behind her. "Julian Moretti... he’s on his way right now! His men are coming! If they find you here—"
"Julian Moretti is currently sitting in a black van three blocks away," Roman interrupted, taking another drag of his cigar. "He isn't coming up, Sabrina. He came to see if you actually had the hard tokens. When my men intercepted his vehicle two minutes ago, he was more than happy to trade his freedom for your location."
Sabrina’s heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird. "He... he betrayed me?"
"Honor among thieves is a myth created by poor men," Roman said softly. He walked over to her leather suitcases, looked down at the stacks of cash, and kicked one of the bags closed with the toe of his shoe. "You were never a player in this game, Sabrina. You were a tool used by your father, and a distraction used by the Morettis."
"That’s not true!" she screamed, her composure finally shattering into hysterical rage. "I planned everything! I took care of Naomi! I gave you freedom from that boring, pathetic woman! She was nothing! She was just a corpse waiting to happen!"
Roman stopped walking.
The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. The silence that followed was so heavy that the rain outside seemed to lose its sound.
Roman reached into his inner jacket pocket. He didn't draw a gun. He pulled out a small, portable digital recorder—the kind used by legal investigators—and pressed play.
A woman’s voice filled the dark penthouse. It was clear, soft, and slightly breathless, but steady.
“If you are listening to this, Sabrina, it means Roman has found the tea canister.”
Sabrina’s eyes widened in horror. She gripped the edge of the terrace door frame, her knuckles turning white.
“You thought I didn't see you,” Naomi’s voice continued from the speaker, echoing off the glass walls. “You thought because I sat in my room and didn't scream at Roman, I was blind. But I watched you through the security cameras I installed in the pantry three months ago. I watched you measure the drops. I watched you smile every time I drank it.”
"Shut it off!" Sabrina shrieked, covering her ears. "Shut it off!"
“I could have told Roman on the first day,” the recorded voice went on, relentless and calm. “He would have killed you in an hour. But if he killed you then, your father would have hidden the financial records. The Morettis would have found another way in. So I waited. I let you give me enough poison to kill me, because I needed you to feel safe. I needed you to build your entire trap, so that when it sprung, it would catch you, your father, and every traitor in the East District together.”
A tear slipped down Sabrina’s pale cheek, but it wasn't a tear of sorrow—it was pure, unadulterated terror.
“You took my life, Sabrina,” Naomi’s voice finished, fading into static. “But I took your future. Goodbye.”
The recording clicked off.
Roman put the device back into his pocket. He looked at Sabrina, his eyes completely dark.
"My wife left specific instructions for you," Roman said.
"What... what instructions?" Sabrina sobbed, dropping to her knees on the marble floor, her hands clasped in a desperate plea. "Roman, please... don't kill me... I’ll leave the country! I’ll never come back! I’ll give you everything!"
"She didn't ask me to kill you," Roman said.
Sabrina blinked, a tiny, desperate ray of hope suddenly lighting up her eyes. "She... she didn't?"
"No," Roman said, stepping back toward his security detail. "She said death was too fast for someone who spent fourteen months watching a pregnant woman drink poison. She wanted you to have time to think about what you built."
He turned his back on her.
"Leo."
"Sir?"
"Call the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Tell Special Agent Miller that the complete, unredacted financial records of the Voss family’s human trafficking and money laundering operations—along with the original toxicology reports and video surveillance of a premeditated homicide—are waiting on the dining table."
Sabrina’s face turned gray. "No... no! Not federal prison! Roman, kill me! Shoot me! Don't give me to the feds!"
In the syndicate, a quick death by a bullet was a mercy. A life sentence in a maximum-security federal facility—where the D’Angelo family’s influence ensured that every inmate and guard knew exactly what she had done to two innocent babies’ mother—was a living hell that would never end.
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"You wanted Naomi’s place," Roman said without looking back as he walked toward the door. "Now you can spend the next forty years in a cell, knowing that her children will grow up ruling everything you tried to steal."
"Roman! ROMAN!" she shrieked, her voice echoing down the dark elevator shaft as the doors slid shut.
