Chapter 9 - JUDGMENT DAY IN MANHATTAN
"You violated the sacred code of the Commission," I said, my voice echoing like a funeral bell in the silent penthouse. "You conspired with a treacherous serpent to murder my father in his bed. You funded a hit on my mother. You brought dishonor to our heritage."
"Dom, please!" Moretti dropped to his knees, clutching the edge of the table. The ruthless crime lord was now weeping openly. "We will give back the docks! We will pay fifty million in restitution! Just spare our lives!"
"Your money is already mine, Salvatore," I replied coldly. "As we speak, my cyber units have liquidated your offshore accounts using the encryption keys Dante kindly provided. Your men at the docks have already laid down their weapons. You have no money, no territory, and no army left."
I stood up, adjusting the lapel of my suit.
"Carlo. Salvatore. Because you did not pull the trigger yourselves, and because my father always respected the older generation, I will grant you one mercy that you did not grant him."
Both men looked up, desperate hope gleaming in their terrified eyes.
"You will sign over every single asset, warehouse, and shipping vessel owned by your families to the Vance foundation tonight," I decreed. "Then, you will take your wives and your children, board a cargo ship to South America before sunrise, and never set foot on North American soil again. If I, or any Vance soldier, ever sees your faces again, your bloodlines end that very second."
"We accept! We sign! God bless you, Dominic, we sign!" Moretti wept, frantically reaching for the pen Leo offered him.
"Get them out of my sight," I ordered.
The Vanguard escorted the disgraced bosses and their disarmed men out of the room, leaving only the two traitors kneeling on the floor before me: Dante and Vanessa.
Vanessa looked up through her tangled hair, her voice cracked and pleading. "Dominic... please. You spared them. You spared the bosses! What about me? I was your fiancée! We loved each other!"
"I loved a woman who never existed," I said, looking down at her with absolute disgust. "I loved a mask. Behind that mask was a greedy, hollow sociopath who poisoned a dying man and beat an old woman."
"I can change! I'll do anything! Dominic, please!" she shrieked, crawling toward my shoes.
"Leo," I said, turning my back on her. "Hand the unedited footage of Vanessa poisoning my father and beating my mother to the District Attorney's office. Include the forensic toxicology reports from the vault."
Vanessa gasped, freezing in place. "The police?! You're a mob boss! You don't go to the police!"
"For a rival boss, I use a bullet," I said over my shoulder. "For a common, parasitic murderer like you, prison is far more fitting. You loved luxury, Vanessa. You loved private jets, Fifth Avenue penthouses, and diamond necklaces. You will spend the next forty years in a six-by-eight concrete cell in upstate New York, scrubbing latrines in an orange jumpsuit until your youth, your beauty, and your sanity rot away completely."
"No! No! Kill me instead! Dominic, kill me!" she screamed hysterically as two guards dragged her backward, kicking and flailing, out of the penthouse.
Then I turned to Dante.
My former brother didn't beg. He knew the rules. He knew that for a brother who betrays the blood oath, the state penitentiary was never an option.
"Any last words, Dante?" I asked quietly.
Dante looked up, a faint, bitter smirk on his bloody lips. "Tell your old man... I'll see him in hell."
May you like
"Tell him yourself," I whispered.
I turned and walked out toward the balcony. Behind me, the muffled crack of Leo’s suppressed pistol ended twenty years of brotherhood in a single, unceremonious beat.
