Chapter 3 - The Leather Dossier
Richard Moretti swallowed hard, the sound loud in the dead stillness of the hall. He was the eldest son, born with the family name, the family chin, and Carmine Moretti’s broad build, but none of the old man’s iron resolve. Where Vincent had spent his twenties crawling through blood-slicked alleyways and taking bullet wounds to establish their family’s supremacy, Richard had spent his time in VIP lounges, burning through trust funds, snorting pure cocaine off marble countertops, and accumulating debts that would make a cartel boss shudder.
“Vincent, let’s… let’s not do this in front of our guests,” Richard stammered, raising a sweaty hand. He attempted to project an air of fraternal authority, but his voice cracked on the final syllable. “We have senators here. Don Falcone is watching from the balcony. Let’s go to the study. We can talk about this like civilized men.”
Vincent didn’t answer with words. He closed the distance between them in two massive, predatory strides.
Before Richard could even raise his arms in defense, Vincent’s right hand shot out like an iron piston, wrapping around Richard’s throat and slamming him backward against a six-foot-tall marble Corinthian column.
The impact knocked the wind out of Richard’s lungs in a violent wheeze. His cocktail glass fell, shattering against his shoes, showering his trousers in cheap bourbon. The guests gasped; several made moves toward the exits, but the heavy oak doors of the ballroom slammed shut with a thunderous *boom*.
Four dozen heavily armed Moretti soldiers, dressed in tactical black with suppressed submachine guns slung across their chests, had silently taken positions at every doorway, every archway, and every balcony overlooking the ballroom. Their leader, a scarred veteran named Marco who had served Carmine Moretti for forty years, racked the slide of his shotgun with an unmistakable metallic *clack*.
Nobody was leaving.
“You talk to me about civilized men?” Vincent growled into Richard’s ear, his grip tightening until Richard’s face turned from a mottled red to a dangerous shade of purple. “While you starved our mother in the dark?”
“V-Vincent… please…” Richard choked, his fingers clawing uselessly at Vincent’s iron wrists. His eyes bulged in their sockets.
With his free hand, Vincent ripped the dark leather folder from beneath Richard’s arm. He threw his brother to the floor like a sack of wet flour. Richard collapsed onto his hands and knees, coughing violently, gasping for oxygen, his forehead pressed against the cold tiles.
Vincent stepped back, flipping open the folder.
Inside were nearly fifty pages of legal documents, printed on heavy bond paper, bearing official state seals and the notarized signatures of top Chicago probate attorneys. Vincent’s eyes scanned the first document.
His pulse hammered behind his temples, but his face remained a carved mask of stone.
*DEED OF ABSOLUTE TRANSFER: VILLA PARADISO.*
Villa Paradiso was not just a piece of real estate. It was the ancestral seat of the Moretti bloodline—a breathtaking, four-hundred-acre coastal estate in Lake Forest that their father, Carmine, had spent twenty years building from the ground up. It was the house where Vincent and Richard had taken their first steps. It was the house where their father had taken his dying breath.
According to the papers, Villa Paradiso had been sold two weeks ago.
The buyer was an offshore shell corporation registered in the Cayman Islands: *Aegis Holdings Ltd.*
The purchase price listed on the contract was an insulting fraction of its value—three million dollars for an estate easily worth forty-five million. And at the bottom of the page, where the owner’s consent was required, was a signature.
*Margaret Moretti.*
Vincent stared at the signature. The strokes were jagged, uneven, completely unlike his mother’s elegant, cursive script. It was the signature of someone whose hand had been physically forced across the paper.
“You sold Villa Paradiso,” Vincent said. It was not a question.
Richard stayed on his knees, shivering, clutching his bruised throat. “It was bleeding money, Vincent! The taxes—the upkeep—it was costing half a million a year! Dad left us in debt! You were too busy waging your stupid war in New York to see the numbers!”
“My father died with fifty million in cash reserves and zero debt,” Vincent replied, his voice terrifyingly calm. He turned to the next page.
What he saw next caused even his iron discipline to fracture.
It was an irrevocable life insurance policy taken out on Margaret Moretti through a private European underwriter. The policy had been initiated sixty days ago—precisely two weeks after Vincent left for the East Coast.
The payout upon death by 'natural causes or accidental fall' was twenty-five million dollars.
The sole primary beneficiary was not Vincent. It was not the Moretti Syndicate Treasury.
It was Richard Moretti and Vanessa DeLuca, listed as joint trustees of the *Aegis Trust*.
Vincent felt a cold, sharp rage settle into the pit of his stomach. This wasn’t just a case of family disrespect. This wasn’t just a matter of a spoiled brother and an ambitious fiancée abusing a defenseless old woman out of spite.
This was a premeditated assassination plot.
They had locked Margaret in a damp, unheated laundry room not merely to hide her, but to systematically break down her immune system. They were inducing pneumonia. They were starving her, waiting for her frail heart to stop under the guise of 'natural failure,' so they could cash a twenty-five-million-dollar insurance check, flip the family estate to their shell company, and walk away multi-millionaires before Vincent could return from the war.
Vincent slowly lowered the folder.
He turned his eyes back toward Vanessa.
The glamorous socialite was backed against the banquet table, trembling, her hands behind her back, searching frantically for anything—a steak knife, an escape route, a savior.
“A twenty-five-million-dollar bounty,” Vincent murmured, walking toward her, each step measured, heavy, and deliberate. “On my mother’s life. Signed by my brother. And organized by my bride-to-be.”
“Vincent, no! You have to listen to me!” Vanessa cried out, tears of genuine terror streaming down her face, ruining her perfect, designer makeup. “It was Richard’s idea! He came to me! He owed twenty million to the Falcones! They were going to kill him, Vincent! He begged me to help him! I was only trying to protect the family name!”
“Liar!” Richard screamed from the floor, his voice cracking with hysteria. He scrambled onto his knees, pointing a shaking finger at Vanessa. “You lying snake! You approached *me*! You said Vincent was never going to come back from New York alive! You said Don Falcone was going to have him ambushed at the warehouse in Queens, and that if we didn’t liquidate the Moretti assets before the New York families moved in, we’d both end up with two in the back of the head!”
The ballroom went dead silent again.
A heavy, suffocating realization dropped over the room like an iron curtain.
Vincent stopped.
He didn't look at Richard. He didn't look at Vanessa.
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Slowly, Vincent lifted his head and looked up at the private VIP balcony on the second level, where Don Salvatore Falcone—the elder statesman of the rival Chicago family—sat behind a wrought-iron railing, smoking a thick Cuban cigar.
***
