Chapter 8 - The Price of a Crown
The silence inside the chapel was absolute, broken only by the steady, faint beep of Elena’s portable heart monitor. The red laser sights from the mercenaries' weapons danced across my chest and the vault console.
"You won't blow this place, Lorenzo," I said, keeping my voice dead level, my body deliberately positioning itself to shield Elena from the balcony line of sight. "You’ve spent twenty years living a lie, wearing a dead man's face, all for the sake of this fortune. You’re too greedy to turn it into dust."
"You don't know me, boy," Lorenzo snarled, his thumb twitching on the detonator. "I survived the purge of '88. I survived your father's execution. I am the Sovereign of this family!"
"You're nothing but a thief who got lucky beneath the Brooklyn Bridge," the true Vittorio spoke up, stepping out from behind the vault door, his posture straight, his voice carrying the full authority of the bloodline. "Look at yourself, Lorenzo. You’re eighty years old, you have no family, no real loyalty, and the woman who carries our blood is looking at you with nothing but disgust. You haven't won anything. You're already dead."
Lorenzo’s face turned an ugly shade of purple, his psychotic composure finally shattering under his brother’s words. "Shut up! Shut up, you pathetic old coward! I’m going to send you to hell myself!"
He raised his left hand to signal his mercenaries to open fire.
But he never got the chance.
From the dark shadows behind the altar, a sudden, blinding flash of muzzle fire erupted. Marco hadn't been standing with us—he had used the distraction to climb the old spiral stairs leading to the organ loft behind the balcony.
Two high-caliber rounds struck Lorenzo directly in the shoulder and the chest, the impact throwing him backward over the stone railing of the balcony. He fell thirty feet, his body crashing heavily onto the hard marble floor of the chapel altar, just inches from the vault entrance.
The remote detonator slipped from his fingers, rolling across the stone.
The remaining mercenaries opened fire blindly into the organ loft, but my Capaci reinforcement operators finally burst through the main chapel doors, their automatic weapons chewing through the mercenary line within seconds. The crossfire was devastating, the golden mosaics chipping away in a shower of glass and dust until the last of the Black Wolves fell silent.
I rushed forward, kicking the detonator away from Lorenzo’s reach. The false brother lay on his back, his breath rattling violently in his chest, blood pooling beneath his designer suit.
He looked up at me, his eyes wide with a sudden, desperate terror as he recognized the same cold, unyielding expression my father had carried twenty years ago.
"Morelli..." he choked out, his fingers clawing at the marble. "The... the treaty... it was... it was meant for greatness..."
"The treaty died when you touched Elena," I said, my voice empty of any mercy. I raised my sidearm, clearing the chamber. "Give my regards to my father."
May you like
Bang.
The echo of the final shot bounced off the stone walls before fading into a profound, beautiful quiet. The war that had started under the Brooklyn Bridge twenty years ago was finally over.
