Chapter 9 - The Final JudgmentThe silence in the grand entrance hall was deafening. The guards standing at the doors gripped their rifles tighter, their eyes darting between Vincent and Salvatore.
Uncle Salvatore slowly lowered his gold-handled cane, leaning his weight onto the marble banister. The jovial, grandfatherly facade was entirely gone, replaced by the cold, ruthless glare of a syndicate boss who had ruled the underworld for decades through fear and blood.
“So,” Salvatore whispered, his voice raspy and venomous. “You found the ledgers. I always told your father he kept his records in the wrong places.”
“You ordered the hit on my mother,” I spoke up for the first time, my voice ringing clear and steady through the vaulted hall. I stepped forward beside Vincent, looking the old monster dead in the eye. “You tried to burn her alive because she stood between you and the shipping ports.”
Salvatore sneered, looking me up and down with absolute contempt. “You look just like her. Weak. Emotional. A pathetic little peasant who thinks wearing a silver locket makes her royalty. I should have finished the job in ’98.”
Before the words had even finished echoing off the stone walls, Vincent moved.
In a blinding flash of motion, Vincent closed the distance between them, grabbed Salvatore by the lapels of his cashmere coat, and slammed him against the marble pillar with enough force to crack the stone.
“You touch her, and I will feed you to the dogs,” Vincent hissed, his face inches from Salvatore’s, veins bulging in his neck.
Salvatore didn't flinch. Instead, a twisted, sinister smile spread across his wrinkled face.
“Go ahead and kill me, boy,” Salvatore wheezed, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “If you pull that trigger, my loyal cells across three continents will activate the dead-man switch. Every shipping lane will freeze, every bank account will lock, and Belladonna House will go up in flames before nightfall. You can’t kill me without destroying everything you built.”
Vincent’s finger tightened on the trigger of his pistol pressed against Salvatore’s chest. The tension in the hall was so thick it could be cut with a knife. Every guard held their breath.
I reached out, placing my hand gently over Vincent’s gun hand.
Vincent paused, looking sideways at me, his dark eyes burning with fierce frustration. “Isabella, step back. This man murdered your mother.”
“He wants you to kill him in anger,” I said calmly, looking straight into Salvatore’s terrified eyes beneath his defiant smirk. “He wants you to trigger the chaos so he can win from the grave.”
I stepped closer to Salvatore, pulling my mother’s journal from beneath my arm and tossing it onto the marble floor at his feet.
“You think you control the syndicate, Uncle?” I said quietly. “You think your dead-man switch is the only insurance policy in this room?”
Salvatore’s eyes darted down to the journal, then back up to me. “What is that?”
“That is the original ledger containing the encrypted digital signatures of every single shell company you used to embezzle from the Moretti family over the last twenty years,” I said smoothly. “Marcus uploaded it to every major international law enforcement database and rival syndicate archive ten minutes before you walked through our gates.”
Salvatore’s face turned the color of ash. His knees buckled, his grip on the marble pillar slipping.
“You… you didn't…”
“The moment you stepped onto this property, your empire officially ceased to exist,” Vincent added coldly, stepping back and lowering his weapon. “The tribunal has already voted to strip you of your title, your assets, and your protection.”
Vincent snapped his fingers.
May you like
Four guards stepped forward, grabbing Salvatore by his arms and ripping the gold signet ring of the Moretti patriarch right off his finger.
“Take him to the Black Site in Siberia,” Vincent ordered without emotion. “Let him spend the rest of his days wondering what it feels like to be completely forgotten.”
