Chapter 3 - The Secret in the Soundbite
Vincent’s chest rose and fell in shuddering, painful gasps as he stared into his little daughter’s eyes.
Blood continued to pool around his temple, but the haze in his dark pupils began to recede, replaced by absolute murder.
He raised one trembling, blood-soaked hand and rested it on Lily’s small wrist, giving her a single, affirmative nod.
Lily understood the silent command that every captain in the Moretti family had obeyed for two decades.
She swiped her finger across the screen and let the remaining two minutes of the audio file blast across the grand foyer.
The recording crackled again, revealing Chloe’s breathy, unmistakable voice speaking in an intimate, hurried whisper.
“The offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands are already routed under the dummy corporation we set up in Panama, Marcus,” Chloe’s voice purred through the speaker.
“Once Vincent breaks his neck on those stairs, the revised will I slipped into his private safe makes me the sole executor of his entire estate,” she continued.
“The doctors will confirm he suffered a massive brain trauma, and the council will have no choice but to appoint you as regent over the street operations,” she whispered.
Marcus’s recorded voice replied with chilling arrogance: “What about the little girl? What do we do with Lily?”
A collective gasp ripped through the three hundred hardened criminals gathered in the ballroom.
Even the most ruthless hitmen in Chicago had one unshakeable, sacred rule: children were off-limits under pain of death.
Chloe’s recorded voice replied without a single second of hesitation: “The girl goes to a boarding school in Switzerland within forty-eight hours.”
“If she ever remembers anything or starts asking questions, you know how to make an accidental overdose look clean,” she cold-bloodedly added.
The audio stopped with a sharp click.
The ballroom became a tomb where nobody dared to breathe.
Chloe’s porcelain mask of beauty shattered into a twisted, hysterical grimace of total desperation.
She looked around the room, searching for a single sympathetic gaze among the family’s most trusted capos.
Every single man she looked at stared back with empty, predatory eyes that promised dismemberment.
Silvio, the senior underboss, slowly unbuttoned his trench coat and drew his pearl-handled .45, letting the slide click back into battery.
“You planned to murder Don Moretti in his own home,” Silvio said, his voice dropping an octave into pure gravel.
“You framed an innocent maid who earns minimum wage cleaning your silver,” Silvio continued, stepping forward.
“And you conspired to poison the bloodline of this family,” he added, raising the barrel until it pointed directly at Chloe’s forehead.
Chloe stumbled backward up the stairs, tripping over the heavy train of her expensive ivory wedding dress.
“Wait! Listen to me, Silvio! That audio was edited with artificial intelligence!” Chloe shrieked, backing toward the upper landing.
“Marcus, shoot him! Kill Silvio right now, that’s an order!” she screamed, losing all sanity.
Marcus Kane, however, was already planning his own survival in the ruthless mathematics of the underworld.
He knew that within thirty seconds, every gun in the mansion would empty its magazine into his chest if he hesitated.
He pulled his Glock 19 from his holster, but he did not point it at Silvio or the capos.
In a desperate bid to buy his own life, Marcus whipped the gun around and aimed it straight at Chloe’s face.
“She forced me into it!” Marcus bellowed, his voice cracking with pure terror as sweat poured down his jaw.
“She threatened to tell Vincent that I had been skimming off the port shipments if I didn't help her stage the accident!” he lied frantically.
“Don Vincent! I was playing along to gather evidence against her! I swear on my mother’s grave, Don Vincent!” Marcus cried out toward the floor.
Elena, still clutching her broken shoulder against the banister, watched the predators turn on each other with wide, shocked eyes.
She had spent her life invisible to these powerful monsters, serving their wine and scrubbing their floors.
Now, the rulers of the city were tearing each other apart over a crime she had almost died taking the blame for.
May you like
Vincent did not look at Marcus, and he did not look at the screaming woman on the stairs.
He used his daughter’s small shoulder for balance, digging his bloody fingers into the floorboards as he prepared to rise.
