The Mafia King of Philadelphia: From witness to his doted wife

”And Marcel?” one of the guards asked, careful, the way you’d ask a question of something that might bite.

”Have them bring him here too.”

He turned toward Marcus again, and something in his face had gone colder, more deliberate, the fury banked now into something with an edge.

”Aliya. Tell her father’s debtors that Don Capri agrees to pay off his debt with his daughter.” A pause, just long enough for the words to land the way he wanted them to. ”Have them take her to work at the factory.”

”The manufacturing site?” Marcus asked, and he made sure his voice stayed even, stayed useful, even though something in his chest had gone tight.

”Yes.” One word. Cold enough to frost the air between them.

Marcus knew better than to argue. He’d seen what happened to men who argued. But he let himself say this much, careful, testing the ground:

”She’s still the Capri princess, boss. Having her on the line with the other girls..” He didn’t finish it. Didn’t need to. They both knew what that place did to hands, to backs, to whatever softness a girl walked in with.

”She’s just one of the girls there now,” Viktor said, like that settled it, like saying it made it true. ”And she’d better hope I never find out she had a hand in this. Because if I do... what’s waiting for her there will look gentle by comparison.”

Marcus nodded once and said nothing else. There was nothing else to say to a man who’d already decided.

Twenty minutes later, a van rolled to a stop at the underground holding cell beneath the Kessler mansion, its headlights cutting twin lines through the dark before the engine went silent.

The cell door scraped open, and two men hauled Dr. Duncan through it by the arms, his heels dragging grooves into the concrete dust. His gray hair stood up in sweat-stiff tufts. His glasses hung off one ear.

”Please, please, I can explain, whatever this is, I can...”

They dropped him onto the chair bolted to the floor and stepped back into the shadows at the edges of the room. The overhead bulb swung slightly from the draft off the door, throwing his shadow long and short and long again across the wall.

Viktor walked in like the cold followed him. No hurry in it. Just the even, unbothered pace of a man who already knew how this would end and was simply waiting for the room to catch up.

He crouched, so he was eye level with the doctor, and folded his hands loosely between his knees.

”I have two questions.” His voice was almost gentle. That was the worst part of it. ”You can lie, or you can tell me the truth. Truth, and we finish this fast. Lie...” He tilted his head, considering. ”I love the slow process. Truly. It’s fun, for me. It will not be fun for you.”

Dr. Duncan’s breath was coming in short pulls through his nose. His hands were shaking in his lap, fingers laced together so tight the knuckles had gone white.

”You don’t even have to ask.” The words tumbled out of him, fast, like he’d been holding them since the van door slammed shut. ”They had my family. My wife, they had them, and I didn’t have a choice, I didn’t have a choice, so kill me if you want, I won’t fight it, I won’t even regret it. Just please. Save my family.”

His voice cracked on the last word. He loved Sienna had since she was a girl who used to sneak into his office and steal his stethoscope to listen to her own heartbeat, delighted every time it was still there, and some part of him seemed to understand that loving her hadn’t been enough to stop his own hands from measuring out the dose.

He’d cut it down, he wanted to say. Cut it down as far as he dared and still satisfy the woman who had his family. It hadn’t mattered.

Sienna’s body had never needed the full dose to answer any drug that touched it, she reacted to everything, always had, a sensitivity her chart had three different warnings about ... and this had been no exception.

Viktor watched him fall apart with something almost like patience.

”That was easy.” He said it quietly, almost to himself, and let a beat of silence sit in the room before the next question came. ”Okay. Who is the woman?”

Duncan’s throat worked. ”She came to my office that morning. She had a photograph. My wife at the market, my daughter at her school gate. She said if I didn’t do it, they’d die. Both of them.”

”Go on.”

”I told her... I told her I couldn’t, that it was impossible. Sienna can smell things other people can’t, she’d know the second the cup touched her lips. She’s like that, she’s always been like that.” His words were running together now, spilling out of him like something bleeding wouldn’t stop.

”The woman said she said add it as a powder, something with no smell, no taste. Serve it in green tea, and she won’t suspect a thing.”

Somewhere in the dark at the edge of the room, Marcus’s pen was already moving, every word going down.

”The lady.” Viktor’s voice hadn’t changed at all, still soft, still level. ”What was her name?”

”I don’t know. She never gave one. I swear to you, I don’t know who she...”

Marcus stepped forward out of the shadow without being asked. A photograph slid from his jacket, held up so it caught the swinging light.

Aliya’s face. Caught mid-laugh in the picture, unaware, beautiful in the way that made men forget themselves.

”Is this her?”

Dr. Duncan stared at the photograph like it might change if he looked at it long enough. Then, slowly, his chin dipped.

He nodded.

The words landed on Viktor like a second blow. His jaw tightened until a muscle jumped along the line of it, and for a moment the room seemed to shrink around him, the swinging bulb the only thing still moving.

”How is Sienna?” Duncan said again, quieter now, like he was spending the last of whatever nerve he had left. ”Please, tell her I’m sorry. She sensed it. She sensed it, and she drank it anyway.”