Chapter 16 - The Wrath of the Vatello Dante didn't waste time with words. As he vaulted out of the secret hatch, his Sig Sauer pistol barked twice. The first bullet shattered Moretti’s kneecap; the second blew the pistol straight out of his hand, sending it spinning across the scorched hardwood floor.
Moretti screamed, collapsing onto the rug in a pool of his own blood, clutching his shattered leg.
Dante stood over him, his face carved from cold stone, his clothes stained with the dust and dampness of the Indiana underground. He looked down at Moretti the way a butcher looks at a diseased carcass.
"You stepped foot in my house," Dante said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, sub-zero register. "You pointed a gun at my son."
"Dante—wait!" Moretti gasped, hyperventilating as blood pooled around his boots. "Marco... Marco set this up! He's still alive in the Indiana facility! He planned the whole thing—the infertility lies, the infiltration, the council betrayal!"
"I know," Dante replied softly. "I just left him there."
Moretti’s eyes widened in sheer terror. "You... you left him? To die?"
"I left him to think about what he built," Dante said without emotion. He raised his pistol, resting the barrel directly between Moretti’s eyes. "And now, your debt to the Vatello family is collected in full."
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The shot echoed through the shattered halls of the estate, silencing the remaining resistance outside.
Within minutes, the surviving mercenaries in the courtyard had dropped their weapons as Nico’s loyalist enforcers swept through the grounds, securing the perimeter once and for all. The coup was crushed, the traitors eliminated, and the blood debt paid in full.
