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</div><br/><br/><br/><div style="text-align: center"><i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'">Now did ya hear 'bout Louie Miller? He disappeared, babe</span></i><br/>
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><i><br/>
After drawin' out all his hard-earned cash<br/>
<br/>
And now MacHeath spends just like a sailor--<br/>
</i></span><br/>
<i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'">--Could it be our boy's done somethin' rash?</span></i>​</div><br/><br/>Salvatore had been saddled with one hell of a conundrum after another after his father had died and left him the senior partner in charge of Morgenstern & Stockton llc. He had all but dropped into this position after he had returned from his rather illustrious service as a judge advocate general in the U.S. Army during the second world war. It would have been all the same to him, for he could have run the firm with the same undaunted, military-style efficiency that he had learned during his time in the service if it had not been for the massive debts that his father had hidden from his family and left up to Salvatore to settle on his own.<br/><br/>Apparently, his father had a very serious taste for gambling that he had kept hidden from everyone else, but there was no hiding the offshore accounts that had been set up to pay off the losses or the intentionally unbalanced checkbooks that Salvatore had come upon while cleaning out his father’s desk in the executive suite at Morgenstern & Stockton.<br/><br/>It had eaten up almost all of the money he had set aside for himself and his growing family at the outset of their marriage and he felt as if he were running out of options. He had promised Daphne the world when she had agreed to marry him and now, only two years in, he had little more to offer her than a drink of gin at the end of every night and honestly, it hurt. No matter how many cases he settled and won, it seemed as if all the money that he was entitled to and had won himself through his scruples and hard work disappeared before his eyes every payday and went to clear out all of the debt his late father had left him when he’d passed.<br/><br/>It wasn’t that he was bad at what he did or that he didn’t win enough cases or make enough money with the firm to keep himself afloat- it was that he had been entirely unprepared for the massive debt that he had been left within the face of how he and Daphne had been living. Neither of them (and this was a large part of why they had married) were really petty thieves- they wanted the whole world or nothing and that was that. For the first year, right up until the birth of their son, that was how they’d been living. A king and his queen in their castle on the hill in upstate New York overlooking the tranquil, still waters of Lake Placid. Now, though they hid it from everyone they knew, they were struggling to make ends meet.<br/><br/>Perhaps though, that was all about to change, thought Salvatore as he poured himself a shot of good whiskey and went over the paperwork he had finalized that day. He had just won a huge lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company whose refusal to disclose their compounding practices had resulted in the untimely death of his client’s wife. The settlement had come out to a whopping 1.3 million dollars. As the client’s legal counsel who had played a large part in negotiating that settlement, Salvatore was entitled to 40% of that.<br/>They were supposed to meet about it today before Morgenstern & Stockton closed their doors for the day, but the client- William Burgess- hadn’t bothered to show.<br/><br/>Salvatore rang his secretary for another drink and she brought him another glass of good Canadian rye whiskey while he went over the files from the case again and again. He had called the number listed for Mr. Burgess many times that day and, lighting a cigar and taking a swig of liquid courage from his glass, he picked up the phone and dialed again.<br/><br/>The operator told him apologetically, that the number had just been taken out of service a few hours ago.<br/><br/>He slammed the phone down and took a good lungs-full of his cigar as he sat and thought about the situation and the options available to him.<br/><br/>This man was obviously trying to get away with the entire settlement- it had happened before, and it was probably going to happen again. Usually, he wouldn’t have hesitated to get the law involved, but this time, some of the tactics he has used to win the case were not exactly looked kindly upon by lawful authorities. Mr. Burgess knew that and now he was trying to use it to his advantage.<br/><br/>The thing he didn’t know though, was that he was dealing with a man that had been raised on one side, by a shrewd lawyer- and on the other side by a cunning heiress of the Amatores- a powerful mafia family. He had learned early that if it was too difficult to get the lawful authorities involved, it was time to take matters into your own hands.<br/><br/>He didn’t have much of a problem with that- it was to keep his wife and his son safe, happy, and well-cared for, no matter what he had to do- it didn’t feel like a crime to him. Anything and anyone in his way was collateral damage of little consequence in his quest to give Daphne and Silas the best life he possibly could. Everyone else could go to hell and Salvatore would escort them there personally if it came down to that.<br/><br/>Which was why it didn’t feel too wrong to him when he put feelers out at all the seedy motels around to see where Mr. Burgess was staying, and it didn’t feel wrong to him when he went to a little pawn shop on his way out of Manhattan and got a pistol, intending to do whatever he had to do to get what he was owed of that money. It was for his family, and thus any bloodshed incurred on their account was a worthy and necessary sacrifice.<br/><br/>He sped home like a bullet, the new gun tucked into his suit jacket, laying in the passenger seat of his car. He wasn’t going to do this, without telling Daphne, but he was going to do it one way or the other- with or without her support.<br/><br/>He came breezing into the kitchen, about to tell her everything, when he realized they had a dinner to go to tonight, and how do you explain to your wife that you need (and are about to) go threatening a former client for money that you are owed and that a pistol is necessary for the endeavor? There was no good way to say that. There was no turn of phrase he could use to bring her on board with the possibility of him committing murder.<br/><br/>He set the gun on the table before him and folded his suit jacket onto the back of his chair and sat down, trying to decide exactly how he was going to try to pitch all of this to the woman he loved.