Chapter 5 - The Innocent Verdict
The library doors groaned open, and Nico entered, carrying Harper in his arms. The little girl had been washed, her dark curls brushed back, and she was holding a warm mug of cocoa with both hands. She looked around the massive, book-lined room with a mixture of awe and fear until her eyes landed on Victoria.
The child froze, the mug shaking in her small hands.
"That's her," Harper whispered, pointing a small, chocolate-stained finger at my fiancée. "That's the lady who pushed Mommy into the dark. She told Mommy that if she screamed, the bad men would come and take me away too."
Victoria’s face went from pale to completely translucent. She dropped the silver derringer onto the sofa, her knees buckling as she sank back into the cushions. The high, righteous anger that had sustained her for ten months collapsed under the pure, unadulterated truth of a four-year-old witness.
"Take the child back upstairs, Nico," I said, my eyes never leaving Victor’s face.
Once the door closed behind them, the silence in the library turned into an engine of execution. Victor looked at the red dots on his chest, then at me. He knew the rules. He had helped me write them. Treason within the family was not settled by a court or a jury; it was settled by the ledger of blood.
"What's the sentence, Don Moretti?" Victor asked, his voice returning to that calm, cold iron that had made him my best enforcer.
"The sentence is what it has always been, Victor," I said, standing up and pulling my coat back on. "But you won't get the quick end you gave my cousin last winter. You're going to stay in the vault you built. You and your bride. Until the Chicago server you setup finishes downloading the empty files I left on the network."
Victor’s eyes snapped up. "The manifests—"
"Are fake, Victor. I knew there was a leak in the security detail before I left for Sicily. I changed the routing codes three weeks ago. The files your people in Chicago are currently using to build their RICO warrant are nothing but a collection of tax frauds committed by the Romano family between 2012 and 2020. You didn't destroy the Moretti house, brother. You just signed your own family's eviction notice."
I walked toward the door, Lev opening it for me before I could reach the handle.
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"Aleandro!" Victor shouted behind me, his voice losing its iron for the first time, turning into the high, frantic scream of a man who saw the concrete closing over his head. "We were brothers! You can't leave me in the dark!"
"The dark is where you put the maid, Victor," I said without looking back. "Let’s see if you can find your way out."
