Chapter 17 - THE SINS OF THE ELDER MORETTI
The air in the subterranean bunker tasted thick with ozone and old dust. The hum of the auxiliary server racks sounded like a nest of mechanical hornets backing up a digital war.
Aleandro’s finger remained frozen on the trigger of his Sig Sauer. The man standing before him—older, leaner, his skin lined with the roadmap of a decade spent hiding in the dark—was supposed to be dead. In the brutal winter of 2016, when the Brooklyn harbor wars were at their peak, a car bomb had supposedly reduced Victor Moretti to ash and bone fragments inside a burning Lincoln Town Car.
"Surprised, little brother?" Victor chuckled, a dry, grating sound that bounced off the concrete walls. He stood up slowly, smoothing the wrinkles of his dark turtleneck. "I suppose a staged funeral is hard to unsee once the church bells ring. But when you inherit an empire built on blood, you learn quickly that bodies are easy to fake if you have the right friends in the morgue."
"You let me take the crown," Aleandro said, his voice dropping into a register so cold it froze the space between them. "You let me bleed through every turf war, every assassination attempt, and every betrayal, while you played ghost in the basement?"
"I didn't just let you take the crown, Aleandro," Victor sneered, stepping closer into the harsh light of the monitors. "I groomed you for it. Father gave you the clock because he knew you were sentimental. He gave me the brains because he knew how this world actually works. But you got soft. You let little girls and stray housekeepers turn a multi-billion-dollar syndicate into a domestic charity."
Mateo raised his shotgun, his eyes locked onto Victor’s chest. "Boss, give the word. Let's send him to hell for real this time."
"Hold," Aleandro commanded quietly, never breaking eye contact with his older brother.
May you like
Victor’s smile widened, entirely unbothered by the barrel pointed at his heart. "Go ahead, shoot me. But before you do, check the master console behind me. Because the moment my heart stops beating, a pre-programmed dead-man switch will automatically upload every single money-laundering ledger, offshore account, and hit-list to every federal prosecutor and international news outlet from New York to Geneva."
Aleandro’s eyes flicked to the glowing red counter ticking down on the primary monitor: 10:00... 09:59... 08:58...
