Chapter 6 - THE CONFESSIONAL
Salvatore Moretti did not shout. He did not issue commands. He simply stood in the doorway of the pantry, his coat draped over his shoulders, his face darker than a thunderhead over open ocean. Behind him, Matteo Moretti leaned against the doorframe, his face completely devoid of its usual arrogant smirk, his eyes darting frantically between Victor and the heavy steel exit doors leading to the courtyard.
“Put the gun down, Victor,” Salvatore said, the words falling like frozen iron weights into the dead quiet of the room.
Victor’s breathing came in ragged, desperate gasps. He looked at the weapon in his hand, then at Salvatore, then at Gabriel, who remained standing against the pantry wall, wiping a fresh trickle of blood from his cheek with cold indifference.
“Don Salvatore, listen to me!” Victor cried, his suave demeanor completely shattering into hysterical desperation. “It’s a frame! Cross engineered the whole thing! He tampered with the audio feeds—he’s an operative sent by the federal prosecutor’s office to divide this family!”
“I heard your voice through the main house speakers, Victor,” Salvatore replied, taking two slow, measured steps forward. The Don’s cane clicked against the blood-streaked tiles. “I heard you speak about Elena Cross. I heard you speak about my late wife. And most importantly… I heard you speak about the stairs.”
Beside Victor, Dr. Edwin Hale dropped to his knees with a pathetic, wet sob. The doctor threw his hands into the air, tears streaming down his flabby cheeks. “It was Victor! Don Salvatore, please, have mercy! He blackmailed me! He found out about my gambling debts in Atlantic City! He forced me to compound the atropine mixtures—he said if I didn't keep Luca sedated, he would have my family executed!”
“Edwin, shut your mouth!” Victor roared, spinning toward the doctor with the Colt raised.
Crack.
A single shot rang out from behind Salvatore. The bullet tore through Victor’s right wrist with surgical precision, sending the heavy Colt spinning across the kitchen floor. Victor shrieked, clutching his shattered arm to his chest as bright arterial blood sprayed across the white porcelain tiles.
Luca stepped out from the shadows behind his father, lowering the Glock Gabriel had given him. The young heir’s eyes were cold, merciless, and completely devoid of the trembling madness that had defined his life for six long years.
“That was for my mother,” Luca said, his voice ringing through the room with absolute clarity.
Salvatore looked at his son. For the first time in nearly a decade, the Don saw no ghost of madness, no trembling coward, no broken boy cowering under blankets. He saw an heir worthy of the Moretti name standing tall in the middle of a gunfight, breathing steadily, holding a weapon with iron discipline.
“Luca,” Salvatore whispered, a rare tremor shaking the old man's vocal cords. “You… you are whole.”
“I was never broken, Father,” Luca replied, pointing the barrel of his weapon toward Matteo, who was slowly edging toward the hallway. “I was poisoned by the men you trusted to run your empire while you mourned in your study. And your own brother was signing the transfer papers.”
Matteo froze, raising his hands, his face ashen. “Salvatore, he’s lying! You can't believe this boy—he’s been out of his mind for half a decade!”
“Check Matteo’s briefcase,” Gabriel said, stepping forward. “In the study. The duplicate bill of lading for the South Terminal is already signed in blank, dated for tomorrow morning—the day Luca was scheduled to die of an accidental cardiac arrest in his sleep.”
Salvatore looked at Gabriel, then back at his brother. Without looking away from Matteo, the Don made a minute flick with his left index finger.
Two loyal capos stepped forward, seized Matteo by the elbows, and dragged him screaming toward the basement stairs. The heavy sound of his boots bouncing down the concrete steps was followed by the dull, final slam of a reinforced steel door.
Victor was weeping on the floor, curled around his ruined wrist. “Salvatore… please… thirty years… I gave thirty years of my life to this house…”
Salvatore looked down at his fallen house manager with an expression of pure, unadulterated disgust. “You didn't give thirty years to this house, Victor. You stole thirty years from it. You stole my wife’s peace. You stole my son’s youth. And you thought you could bury this family in its own garden.”
Salvatore turned to his head of security. “Take Dr. Hale to the harbor. Put him on a shipping container bound for the black sea with nothing but a gallon of water. If he survives the voyage, he can spend the rest of his life picking trash in Odessa.”
“And Victor?” the capo asked.
Salvatore looked at Gabriel. The old Don’s eyes were filled with an ancient, terrifying weight. “The servant brought the charges. The servant decides the punishment.”
Gabriel looked down at Victor Sloane—the man who had mocked his sister, who had thrown her down stone steps, who had bragged about crushing her body camera only minutes earlier.
The room held its breath. Luca watched Gabriel. Salvatore watched Gabriel. The guards waited for the signal to put a bullet through Victor’s temple.
“Death is an escape,” Gabriel said, his voice cutting through the damp kitchen air like a scalpel. “Death lets him stop thinking. He doesn't get to die in the dark where nobody sees.”
Gabriel knelt beside Victor, leaning down until his lips were inches from the manager’s ear. “You’re going to federal custody, Victor. Every ledger you hid under Luca’s desk is already on the United States Attorney’s desk. Every dollar you stole from the Morettis, you’re going to account for in an open courtroom. You’re going to spend the next forty years in a six-by-eight concrete cell, looking at the ceiling, knowing that a servant took your kingdom away with a four-dollar linen rag and a phone call.”
Gabriel stood up, turning to the Don. “Call the federal marshals, Don Salvatore. If your loyalists kill him, the state will investigate this estate until every dock you own is padlocked. Let the law take him. It will destroy him far more completely than a shallow grave.”
Salvatore stared at Gabriel for five agonizing seconds, then slowly, deliberately, nodded his head. “Bind his wounds. Hand him over to the feds at the gate.”
As the guards dragged Victor away, leaving a dark smear of blood along the floor, Salvatore looked at his son, then at Gabriel.
“You have avenged your sister, Gabriel Cross,” Salvatore said softly. “You have restored my son to life. Name your price. One million. Five million. A dock terminal of your own. Whatever you demand, it is yours.”
Gabriel pulled Elena’s bent silver confirmation medal from his pocket, holding it up so the overhead lights caught its tarnished luster.
“I don't want your money, Don Salvatore,” Gabriel said coldly. “I want you to sign a public statement exonerating Elena Cross of all theft and hysteria charges, witnessed by the city press. And I want one more thing.”
May you like
Salvatore tilted his head. “What?”
“I want to know who gave Victor the poison in the first place,” Gabriel said. “Because Dr. Hale didn't compound those industrial-grade chemicals in his office. There is a twelfth player in this city, Don Salvatore… and he’s coming for the docks tonight.”
