Chapter 8 - The Mask SlipsMarco stopped ten feet away from me, looking down at Victor groaning on the floor before flashing me a warm, filial smile.
“You look stressed, Uncle. Perhaps it’s time you finally stepped down and let the younger generation take the reins, just like we discussed.”
The silence in the room was absolute. You could hear the faint ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.
I didn't smile. I didn't raise my voice. I simply walked over to the mahogany table, picked up the amber prescription bottle, and set it down right in front of Marco.
“You skipped a step in your calculations, Marco,” I said quietly.
Marco’s smile flickered for a fraction of a second—the exact same microscopic tell I had seen in Victor twenty-four hours earlier.
“I don’t know what you’re implying, Uncle.”
“I’m implying that when you wire millions of dollars through Swiss shell companies to fund a syndicate coup, you should make sure your private cryptographic signature isn't stamped directly onto the metadata,” I said, pulling out my phone and projecting the financial transfer logs onto the large wall-mounted screen behind the table.
Bright, glowing red lines of text filled the room. Account numbers. Routing codes.
And right at the bottom, glowing in bold white letters: Authorized by Marco Moretti, Geneva Holdings Ltd.
Marco stared at the screen, his polished composure cracking like fragile glass. The color drained entirely from his face, leaving his skin a sickly, ash-gray.
“This... this is fabricated,” Marco stammered, taking a nervous step backward toward the doors. “Anyone could forge a digital signature! You’re getting old, Uncle! You’re hallucinating conspiracies!”
“Fabicated?” A cold voice echoed from the doorway.
Gabriel stepped aside, and two armed guards pushed another figure into the room—a trembling, terrified IT technician from our Geneva office, wrists bound in zip-ties.
“Tell the council who forced you to bypass the estate’s security servers three months ago, Leo,” Gabriel commanded.
The technician fell to his knees beside Victor, sobbing uncontrollably. “It was Mr. Marco! He threatened to kill my family if I didn't install the remote surveillance backdoor and route Victor’s poison supply lists directly to his offshore terminals! I swear to God, I had nothing to do with the murder plot!”
Marco’s eyes darted wildly around the room. He looked at Rocco. He looked at the other veteran capos.
Every single face at the table was carved from stone. Cold, unforgiving, and deadly.
“You ungrateful little bastard,” Rocco whispered, standing up slowly from his chair, his hand sliding deliberately toward the heavy revolver holstered beneath his suit jacket.
“Wait!” Marco shrieked, stumbling backward as Rocco advanced on him like a predator closing in on wounded prey. “Uncle, please! I’m your blood! We’re family!”
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I stood completely still, watching my nephew with eyes as cold as winter ice.
“My brother—your father—died protecting this syndicate with honor,” I said, my voice cutting through his frantic pleas like a razor blade. “He would have put a bullet between your eyes himself for what you’ve tried to do.”
