It is not large, but it is heavy.
The signet—silver, with a blue-black stone at its heart—is bisected by the old Moretti crest—a lion rampant, jaws full of something indeterminate, teeth glinting even in this bad light.
The band is sticky, the blood at the seam now just a ridged, brown comma.
I set it at the midpoint of the table and let it spin once on its axis before it settles, the stone upright and the lion facing O'Duinn.
The silence holds.
Then the Chairman, voice trembling only a little, says, "Luca's?"
I nod.
No one moves for a long minute.
Padraig O'Duinn breaks first.
"You bring us this as what—a threat, or a souvenir?"
I shrug.
"A proof. The Italians are gone. Their men, their money, their claims."
Since Moretti's death, the Ricci family has withdrawn like a tide that never intended to return.
The warehouses in Ringsend have been emptied, the accounts in Milan gone dark.
Even the middlemen—Paolo, Enzo, the others—have vanished from the city’s back rooms, their numbers disconnected, their safehouses turned over to real estate developers who don’t ask questions.
Whatever hold they had on Dublin is broken.
Not by accident but by design.
They saw what happened to Moretti, and they chose retreat over retaliation.
My voice is soft, because that is the only way it carries here.
Padraig's face does something complicated, a twitch of grief or relief or calculation.
He glances at the other men, checking for reaction.
Most stare at the ring.
One, the new Russian, is already bored.
Keira says nothing.
Her hands are folded in her lap, but her foot taps once, then is still.
The Chairman clears his throat, a dry sound like a warning cough in a tuberculosis ward.
"And you expect us to take your word for this?"
I look at him.
"You can walk the docks. You can phone any of Moretti's runners. Or you can ask anyone who was at the cathedral this morning." I say it flat.
No bravado, no invitation.
