Chapter 2 - The Voice from the Shadows
Every whisper in the great ballroom died instantly as Lily Moretti’s voice echoed across the vaulted ceiling.
The two guards dragging Elena froze in their tracks, their boots sliding on the slick marble.
Elena lay gasping on the floor, her cheek pressed against the cold stone, staring up at the child in disbelief.
Chloe’s theatrical tears stopped flowing as her entire body seized with sudden, suffocating panic.
The bride-to-be lunged forward across the lower steps, her manicured fingers clawing through the air toward the child.
“Lily, darling, give that to me right now!” Chloe snapped, her tone switching from grieving widow to venomous viper.
“You are in shock, baby, let Marcus take the phone so the family can secure the evidence!” Chloe commanded, her voice trembling.
Lily did not flinch; she ducked smoothly behind the towering frame of Uncle Silvio, Vincent’s oldest underboss.
Silvio stepped forward instinctively, his heavy trench coat falling open to reveal the pearl-handled .45 nestled in his shoulder holster.
He did not love Vincent’s cold methods, but he was bound by ancient Sicilian blood to protect the Don's child at all costs.
“Back away from the girl, Chloe,” Silvio rumbled, his voice gravelly and dangerous.
Lily poked her small head from behind the underboss’s massive frame and unlocked the screen with her thumb.
She tapped the red playback icon on the high-definition recording and pointed the speakers directly at the crowd.
A burst of static hissed through the microphone, followed by the muffled rustle of heavy fabric.
Then, a deep, raspy baritone echoed across the grand hall, unmistakable in its cold cruelty.
“The stairs are slick enough, but you have to hit him hard right at the top landing,” the voice instructed on the tape.
“Make it look like the maid did it, shove the girl into the frame, and I’ll have my men break her neck before the paramedics arrive,” the audio played.
Silence fell over the room, so profound that the dripping of Vincent’s blood onto the marble sounded like falling coins.
The voice on the phone belonged to Marcus Kane, the Chief of Moretti Family Security.
Marcus was standing less than ten feet away, his leather-gloved hand still resting on his holstered firearm.
The color completely drained from Marcus’s rugged face, leaving him looking like a corpse in a five-thousand-dollar suit.
Three hundred pairs of eyes shifted from the child’s glowing phone to the towering chief of security.
Capos who had served Vincent for thirty years slowly drifted their right hands toward the inside pockets of their jackets.
The two guards who were pinning Elena suddenly let go of her arms and backed away with their hands raised.
Chloe stood frozen on the stairs, one arm still outstretched, her mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish.
“That’s an artificial recording!” Marcus blurted out, his voice cracking beneath the immense weight of the syndicate's gaze.
“That is a fake audio track created by our enemies to turn this family against itself on the Don’s wedding night!” Marcus yelled, trying to sound authoritative.
Nobody stepped forward to support him.
The guests took three synchronized steps backward, clearing a wide circle around Chloe and the chief of security.
Elena pulled herself up against the base of the staircase, her breath rattling as she cradled her shattered shoulder.
Lily pressed her thumb against the screen again, looking Marcus dead in his terrified eyes.
“I wasn't just recording audio, Marcus,” Lily said, her voice piercing the silence with terrifying clarity.
“My phone was set to high-speed video because I was filming Daddy's surprise birthday video from the balcony,” the child added.
On the cold marble floor below the staircase, a low, wet groan rattled from the shadows.
The fingers of Vincent Moretti’s left hand twitched, his diamond signet ring clinking against the floor.
His heavy eyelids fluttered open, dark and crimson-veined, fixing their lethal gaze upon his chief bodyguard.
Vincent had survived five assassination attempts, three car bombings, and a twenty-year war for the streets of Chicago.
He had fallen thirty feet down a flight of marble steps, but his skull was harder than the stone he lay upon.
He couldn't stand, but he could hear every single syllable coming from his daughter’s speaker.
And he recognized the voice of the man he had paid five million dollars a year to watch his back.
Chloe saw the Don’s hand move and her knees almost gave out from sheer, unadulterated terror.
The man she believed she had just murdered was breathing, listening, and waking up to pass sentence.
Lily walked past the circle of silent gunmen and dropped to her knees beside her bleeding father.
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“Daddy,” she whispered softly, pressing the phone gently against his chest.
“There’s two more minutes on the tape, and you need to hear what she promised Marcus in the dark,” Lily said.
