HE THOUGHT HIS FATHER WAS BRAIN-DEAD FOR FIVE YEARS—UNTIL THE CRUEL HOUSEKEEPER HIT HIM, AND THE DYING DON POINTED A FINGER AT HIS KILLER!

The fallen chair made a dull, heavy thud against the Persian rug, but no one moved to pick it up.

Marco Vane stood trapped between the roaring fireplace and the barrel of six tactical rifles. His chest rose and fell in rapid, terrified pants, the pristine veneer of his Wall Street sophistication completely shattered. His eyes darted from the resurrected Don to Luca, whose face was carved from granite.

"Uncle Antonio..." Marco stammered, raising his hands palms-outward in a desperate, trembling plea. "You’re confused. The medicine—the stroke—it’s playing tricks on your mind! Luca, listen to me! He’s hallucinating! You can't take the word of a man who just woke from a five-year coma!"

"It was not a coma, Marco," Antonio said.

The Don’s voice was growing stronger with every breath, the intravenous clearing agents rapidly flushing the remaining toxins from his vocal cords. He gripped the armrests of his wheelchair, his knuckles white, and with a terrifying, agonizing groan of pure willpower, the eighty-one-year-old patriarch pushed himself upward.

Luca moved to assist, but Antonio raised a sharp, commanding hand, waving his son off.

Antonio Moretti stood on his own two feet.

He was frail, his frame thinned by years of enforced starvation, but his posture was the posture of an emperor. He leaned heavily against the mahogany table, towering over the room with a presence so suffocating that even the armed guards instinctively stiffened their backs.

"Five years," Antonio rasped, his voice echoing off the vaulted timber ceiling. "Five years, Marco. I sat in that freezing room. I heard you whisper to Veronica every Sunday after church. I heard you discuss the maritime port deeds while you adjusted my blanket. I felt the needle sink into my flesh every time I tried to blink my eyes to tell my son I was alive."

Marco’s knees buckled slightly. The psychological weight of facing the man he had buried alive was an unbearable horror. "Uncle... I did it for the family! Look at the city! Luca was leading us into pointless turf wars! The port redevelopment is worth four billion dollars! We needed legal control—"

"You cut the brake lines on my town car," Antonio roared, the raw, guttural fury of the old Don finally shattering his physical weakness. "You murdered my driver! You broke my spine! And then you put a viper in my bed to slowly poison my brain!"

Marco’s expression shifted. The pathetic, pleading facade dissolved, replaced by the cornered, rabid desperation of a condemned man.

"And you were a fool to live this long!" Marco snarled, his hand darting inside his pinstripe jacket.

"GUN!" Sofia screamed from the corner of the room.

Her voice, sharp and instinctive, shattered the room’s paralyzing tension a half-second before anyone else reacted.

Marco whipped the snub-nosed .38 revolver from his shoulder holster, aiming the barrel straight between Antonio’s eyes. He didn't care about the guards. He didn't care about escaping. In that split second of psychotic realization, he knew his life was over, and his only goal was to finish the assassination he had botched five years ago.

*BANG!*

The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed dining hall.

A cloud of sulfur and white smoke erupted, the crystal decanter on the table shattering into a thousand glittering diamonds.

Marco stumbled backward, his eyes wide with shock, looking down at his own chest.

A bloody crimson rose bloomed instantly across his white silk shirt, right over his breast pocket. He hadn't fired.

Luca stood across the table, his custom Colt .45 smoking in his grip. He had drawn, aimed, and fired with the terrifying, lightning-fast precision that had made him the most lethal boss on the East Coast.

Marco gasped, the revolver slipping from his limp fingers and clattering onto the hardwood floor. He dropped to his knees, clutching his chest, coughing dark blood onto the antique rug. He looked up at the Don, his lips bubbling with crimson froth.

"I... I was... the future..." Marco gurgled.

"You were a parasite," Luca said coldly, stepping around the shattered glass. He leveled the barrel of his pistol directly against Marco’s forehead. "And parasites don't inherit empires."

*BANG.*

The second shot extinguished the life from Marco Vane’s eyes. His body collapsed forward, hitting the floor with a final, heavy thud, lying motionless before the roaring hearth.

Silence descended upon the dining hall, thick and heavy with the scent of gunpowder and iron.

Luca lowered his weapon, clicking the safety on with a practiced flick of his thumb. He looked across the room at Sofia, who stood pressed against the wall, her hands clamped over her belly, her breathing fast but steady. She hadn't screamed in terror; she had given the warning that saved his father’s life.

Antonio slowly lowered himself back into his wheelchair, his chest heaving with exertion, but his gray eyes shining with an immense, unburdened peace. The ghost that had haunted the Moretti mansion for five years had finally been laid to rest.

"Dante," Luca ordered calmly, sliding his gun back into its leather holster.

"Boss?"

"Clear this trash from my dining room. Send the body to the docks. Let the fishes in Brooklyn have the maritime boss they were waiting for."

"Consider it done, Boss."

As the guards moved in to wrap the traitor’s body, Luca walked across the room. He didn't stop until he was standing directly in front of Sofia. He looked down at the pregnant maid who had defied an abusive monster, endured the terror of a mafia execution, and held the line when the world crumbled around them.

He reached out, his hand steady and warm, and gently took her trembling fingers into his own.