Chapter 12 - The Bloodline Injunction
The front door didn't break; Dante unbolted it himself. He stood in the doorway, blocking the draft, his broad shoulders filling the frame. He wore only faded denim and a gray henley, barefoot in the freezing draft, yet the aura of lethal authority that had once terrified Wall Street surged back into his posture in an instant.
"One foot over that threshold, Vance," Dante said, his voice deadly calm, "and you won't survive to cash your retainer."
Harrison Vance didn't flinch, though his eyes darted nervously to the shadows behind Dante. But Eleanor Moretti pushed past him. Her cane clicked against the oak floor as she stepped directly into our kitchen. Her perfume—expensive, suffocating tuberose—cut through the sweet scent of baby powder like formaldehyde.
Her ice-blue eyes scanned the humble kitchen: the drying cloth diapers, the cheap wooden chairs, the iron kettle on the woodstove. A sneer of absolute disgust curved her painted lips.
"Look at you," Eleanor said, her voice dripping with venom. "The prince of Chicago, playing house in a peasant’s shack. You gave up a twelve-billion-dollar throne for a woman who worked in our accounting department."
"Get out, Eleanor," Dante said, not calling her Mother. His fists were clenched so tight the knuckles were bloodless.
"I will leave, Dante. As soon as you hand over the Moretti heirs," she replied smoothly, pulling a crisp, blue-bound legal docket from inside her coat and dropping it onto our rough pine table.
I walked out from the bedroom, holding Mateo tightly in my left arm and Clara in my right. "You touch my children, and I will kill you," I said, my voice trembling with a feral rage I didn't know I possessed.
Eleanor didn't even look at my face; her eyes went straight to the babies. "You don't have children, Lena. You have wards of the Moretti Dynasty Trust."
Vance stepped forward, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses. "Six months ago, Dante relinquished his equity. However, under Section 14 of the Moretti Family Charter, drafted by Dante’s late father thirty years ago, any male heir born to the first-born son remains the sole hereditary trustee of the family assets. Furthermore, Section 14 stipulates that should the biological father be deemed mentally incapacitated or indigent—which Dante officially was when he renounced his fortune without board approval—custody of said heirs reverts automatically to the Matriarch."
May you like
"That's illegal," I spat, tears of fury burning my eyes. "No judge in America would enforce that medieval bullshit!"
"A Cook County probate judge already did," Eleanor said, a cruel smile touching her lips. "At midnight. You have forty-eight hours to surrender Mateo and Clara to the family estate in Lake Forest for official lineage verification and custody transfer. If you flee, Dante will be arrested for interstate parental kidnapping, and federal agents will take them anyway."
