After Surviving a Bribe-Free $40 Million Syndicate Brake-Sabotage Ambush, a Rebuilding Mafia Boss Faces His Traitorous Protégé Step-Brother and an African Grey Parrot in a Unanimous Battle for Rede...
The drive to the Indiana harbor garage felt like a journey back in time. The address Aris provided led me down a winding, overgrown road, past rusted metal fences and crumbling brick buildings. The air smelled of salt, decay, and old oil.
The garage itself was a derelict structure, its windows boarded up, its paint peeling like sunburnt skin. A single, custom-built Ford F-250, exactly as Aris had described, sat tucked under a tarp in the corner of the yard. It was Sal’s.
I cut the engine of my car, the silence suddenly deafening. I approached the heavy metal door, pushing it open with a groan of rusted hinges.
Inside, the light was dim, filtering through cracks in the roof. Tools hung from pegboards, coated in a fine layer of dust. A worn armchair sat beside a small, flickering television. And there, tinkering with a carburetor on a workbench, was Sal DeLuca.
He was older, his hair thinner, but his hands, scarred and calloused, were unmistakable. He froze, his head snapping up, a wrench still clutched in his grip. His eyes, usually sharp, were wide with fear.
“Leo,” he rasped, his voice barely a whisper. He looked like a man who’d seen a ghost, or worse, someone he owed a debt to.
I didn’t speak, simply reached into my jacket and pulled out my phone. I pressed play.
Julian’s mimicked voice filled the dusty garage. “Cut the lines. Make it look like an accident. Forty million reasons to disappear.”
Sal’s face crumpled. The wrench clattered to the floor, echoing loudly in the sudden quiet. He looked away, shaking his head slowly, repeatedly.
“It wasn’t supposed to go like that, Leo,” he mumbled, his shoulders slumping. “He said you’d just… get a scare. That you’d slow down.”
“He said you wouldn’t die,” I finished, the words tasting like ash. “Did he really expect me to believe that after my car careened off a highway at eighty miles an hour?”
Sal finally met my gaze, his eyes moist. “He came to me, Leo. Julian. Said you were pushing him out, that you were taking everything. He offered me a bag. A big one.”
“How big?” I asked, my voice flat.
“Fifty thousand in cash,” Sal confessed, running a hand through his thinning hair. “He had it all there, in a duffel bag, right in my office, midnight. Just like the bird said.”
He pointed a trembling finger at the exact spot where his office used to be, now a pile of rusted filing cabinets. The specific details, the midnight meeting, the cash, they all aligned perfectly with Shadow’s mimicry.
“He promised me protection,” Sal continued, his voice cracking. “Said if I helped him, he’d set me up, keep me safe. Then you survived, and he vanished, and I knew I was next.”
He dropped into the armchair, burying his face in his hands. “I’ve been hiding here ever since, Leo. Waiting for the hammer to fall. I heard the stories, that you were crazy. I almost believed them.”
He looked up, his face etched with desperation. “I’ll tell them everything, Leo. I’ll tell the elders. I’ll sign whatever you want. Just… please. Don’t let Julian come after me.”
The silent witness, buried for months in fear and guilt, had finally broken. His testimony, combined with the bird’s chilling audio, was irrefutable. Julian’s carefully constructed web of lies was about to unravel.
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