Chapter 3 - Mother’s Darkest SecretThe courtyard plunged into a deeper, heavier silence. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
I lowered the gun from Julian’s face, letting him gasp for oxygen in the dirt, and turned slowly toward my mother. Elena Moretti was a woman who had ruled the New York underworld’s matriarchy with an iron fist for thirty years. She had survived three mob wars, two federal indictments, and an assassination attempt by the Chicago outfit.
Yet today, she looked fragile, old, and completely broken.
"Mother," I said, every syllable dripping with lethal calm. "Care to explain why you look like you've been carrying a corpse in your closet?"
Elena trembled as she clutched a lace handkerchief to her chest. She looked up at me, tears cutting clean tracks through her heavy makeup.
"Because I knew, Alessandro," she whispered. The confession tore out of her throat like jagged glass. "Not about the murder... not about Sophia’s husband. But I knew Julian and Isabella were conspiring behind your back. Three weeks ago, I found their letters hidden in the study safe. They were planning to spike your celebratory champagne with a synthetic neurotoxin—something untraceable that mimics a massive coronary."
A collective gasp rippled through the three hundred guests. Capos exchanged dark, shifting glances; alliances forged over decades were fracturing in real-time.
Isabella let out a shrill, hysterical laugh, abandoning all pretense of innocence. Her designer gown rustled as she stepped forward, her face twisted into a mask of pure venom.
"You old fool!" Isabella screamed at my mother, her manicured nails clawing at the empty air. "You think you could protect him forever? Alessandro is arrogant! He thinks he’s untouchable because he sits on a throne built by corpses! But he’s blind! He spends more time managing cargo manifests than looking at the people sleeping in his bed!"
I walked over to Isabella, my expression completely blank. I didn't yell. I didn't curse. When a man reaches the absolute apex of power, anger is a waste of energy; cold execution is the only language that matters.
"Is that right?" I asked softly, stopping inches from her face.
Isabella’s chest heaved beneath her silk corset. She glared up at me, defiance burning in her eyes like wildfire. "Yes! Julian promised me half the empire! We were going to ship you off to a wooden box in international waters, and no one would have ever questioned it because everyone thinks you died of a weak heart like your father!"
"My father didn't die of a weak heart," I said, the words slipping out of my mouth before I could stop them.
The air vanished from my lungs. A sudden, terrifying realization slammed into my chest like a freight train.
I whipped my head around to look at my mother.
May you like
Elena Moretti went ghost-white, her mouth opening and closing silently like a fish out of water.
"Mother," I snarled, crossing the distance between us in two strides and grabbing the arms of her chair. "What did she just say? How did my father die?"
