Chapter 7 - The Last Order
The headlights of the capos' departing cars faded into the dark New Jersey night, leaving only Santino’s personal security detail standing in the rainy quarry.
Beatrice was weeping loudly, collapsed in her chair, while August sat unmoving, his eyes fixed on the muddy ground.
Mateo walked over to Santino, handing him a heavy, suppressed pistol. "The boat for Palermo is ready for Beatrice. What about him?"
Santino looked down at his father. The rage that had fueled him for days had vanished, leaving behind only a hollow, heavy sorrow. This was the man who had taught him how to shoot, how to lead, how to survive in a brutal world. And now, that same man was nothing more than a monster stripped of his crown.
"Leave us," Santino ordered softly.
"Santino..." Mateo hesitated. "Are you sure?"
"Leave us, Mateo. Five minutes."
Mateo nodded, grabbing Beatrice’s chair and dragging the weeping woman away toward the waiting SUVs, leaving father and son alone in the center of the dark, cavernous quarry.
The rain beat down rhythmically against the stone walls.
Santino slowly walked over and sat down on an overturned wooden crate directly across from his tied-up father. He set the heavy black pistol on his knee.
August raised his head slowly. The fire in his eyes had finally dimmed, replaced by the dull realization of his total defeat.
"You played it well," August rasped, his voice raw from the rain and cold. "Using Beatrice's weakness. Getting Valetti to turn. I taught you well."
"You taught me how to fight enemies, Father," Santino said softly. "You never taught me how to protect my daughter from her own grandfather."
August let out a dry, bitter laugh. "In this life, there are no grandfathers, Santino. There are only leaders and liabilities. Your mother understood that. When I took this family over from my father in '78, I didn't hesitate."
Santino froze, his eyes narrowing sharply. "What did you say?"
August smiled—a dark, ghastly smile. "You think you're the first Moretti to stand in a dark place with a gun aimed at his father? My father grew old. He grew soft. He wanted to make peace with the Irish. So I put a bullet in the back of his head during a hunting trip in the Catskills and told the family it was a sniper."
Santino felt a cold chill run down his spine. The rot in his family line wasn't new. It was a generational curse, a bloody cycle of fathers devouring their sons and sons butchering their fathers for a throne of gold and blood.
"You see?" August whispered, leaning forward as far as his ropes would allow. "It’s in our blood, Santino. You can't escape it. If you don't kill me tonight, I will spend every remaining breath I have hunting you and that girl. And if you do kill me... you become just like me."
August chuckled darkly—a terrifying, madness-tinged sound that echoed through the rain. "Either way, I win. Either way, the curse continues."
Santino stared at his father for a long, quiet moment. He looked at the heavy pistol on his knee. He thought of Nora back at the manor, sitting in her bright pink bedroom, drawing flowers with her crayons, her small face pale from the poison this man had put into her body.
Slowly, Santino picked up the pistol.
August raised his chin, his eyes locking onto Santino’s, waiting for the bullet he believed was inevitable. "Do it," August hissed. "Become what you were born to be."
Santino raised the gun... and then casually tossed it into the deep, muddy puddle between them.
August blinked, utterly stunned. "What are you doing?"
"I'm breaking the cycle," Santino said calmly.
Santino stood up, adjusting his dark trench coat. "You're not dying tonight, August. Dying makes you a martyr. Dying lets you escape."
Mateo pulled up in a dark, heavily armored van, its side doors sliding open automatically. Two silent guards stepped out.
"Where are you taking me?!" August yelled, his composure finally shattering as the guards lifted his chair and began hauling him toward the van. "Santino! Answer me!"
"A small monastery in the mountains of northern Sicily," Santino said, standing in the rain, watching his father being loaded into the dark interior. "No phones. No visitors. No internet. Just four stone walls, a bed, and vows of absolute silence. You will live the rest of your life isolated from the world you tried so hard to rule."
"You coward!" August screamed, thrashing against his ropes as the guards secured him inside. "Kill me! Shoot me like a man!"
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"You aren't a Don anymore, Father," Santino said, his voice flat and final as he stepped up to the van door. "You're just a ghost. And ghosts don't get to speak."
Santino slammed the heavy sliding door shut, locking his father into the darkness forever.
