Chapter 18 - The Judgment of the House
Thirty minutes later, the nursery had been cleared of bodies. Elena was safely downstairs with the medical team, her head wound bandaged, while Sophia sat across the mahogany dining table from Leo, watching him clean carbon residue from the bolt carrier of his carbine with clinical precision.
In the center of the room, tied securely to heavy iron chairs, sat Victor and Julian.
The double doors swung open, and Rocco Moretti strode into the room. He hadn't changed out of his travel suit, but the fatigue of a trans-Atlantic flight was entirely absent from his posture. He looked like an apex predator returning to reclaim his territory.
He stopped in front of Julian, looking down at the son he had never known existed—the ghost Valentina had hidden away to destroy him from the inside out.
"You have my eyes," Rocco said quietly, his voice devoid of anger, which made it infinitely more terrifying. "And you have my temper. But you lack the one thing a Moretti needs to survive."
Julian spat a drop of blood onto the Persian rug, glaring up at his father with pure venom. "You chose him. You chose a bastard you found in the trash over your own flesh and blood."
"I didn't choose blood, Julian," Rocco said, turning his gaze toward Sophia sitting quietly at the end of the table. "I chose character. I chose loyalty. Things your mother forgot to teach you before she died alone in a Montenegrin stone cell."
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Rocco turned back to Marco. "Take them to the vineyard cellar. Lock them in the old fermentation vaults. No communications. No light. They can spend the rest of their lives figuring out how to survive without an empire."
As the enforcers dragged Julian and Victor screaming into the subterranean stairwell, the heavy oak doors slammed shut, sealing the fate of the last traitors to the house of Moretti.
