Chapter 5 - Blood Money and Betrayal
Marco stepped forward, carrying a sleek silver laptop and a thick manila folder stamped with the Moretti syndicate crest.
He placed the laptop on the nearest banquet table and opened the screen, which was already unlocked and running forensic software.
“Speak, Marco,” Luca commanded, his voice cutting through the heavy silence of the ballroom.
Marco cleared his throat, his eyes scanning the documents inside the folder with military precision.
“Three days ago, our cyber-surveillance team flagged an unauthorized encrypted transmission from this mansion,” Marco announced.
The entire assembly of mafia capos lean in, their expressions hardening into stone.
“The transmission was bounced through three dummy servers in the Cayman Islands before landing in North Chicago,” Marco continued.
“Directly into the private server of Mikhail Volkov.”
A collective murmur of shock and fury rippled through the gathered men.
The Volkov syndicate was the Moretti family’s blood rival, a brutal Russian outfit with whom Luca had fought a bloody turf war two years ago.
A peace treaty had been signed in blood, but everyone knew the Russians were waiting for a single crack in the Moretti armor.
“What was in the transmission, Marco?” Luca asked, though his eyes never left Vanessa’s terrified face.
“Detailed architectural blueprints of this estate, Boss,” Marco answered coldly.
“Specifically, the blind spots in the external camera grid, the emergency evacuation routes, and the private master bedroom safe combination.”
Vanessa let out a small, pathetic choke, curling into a ball on the floor.
“There’s more,” Marco added, pulling a stack of printed financial statements from the folder.
“Miss Sterling was promised a payout of fifty million dollars and thirty percent of the North Side shipping docks.”
“All she had to do was facilitate an extraction.”
Marco looked down at Vanessa with pure disgust.
“The plan wasn’t just to lock Lily in the vault to keep her quiet, Boss,” Marco said, his voice dropping into a lethal pitch.
“The vault was the extraction point.”
“The exterior ventilation shaft of that old wine cellar connects directly to the old Prohibition drainage tunnels beneath the estate.”
“Volkov’s mercenaries were scheduled to breach that tunnel at midnight tonight, during the fireworks display.”
“They were going to kidnap Lily from the vault while everyone was celebrating your engagement downstairs.”
The ballroom erupted into furious shouts and the metallic sound of multiple weapons being unholstered.
Capo after capo stood up, their faces red with outrage at the sheer depravity of the plot.
To use an engagement party as a smokescreen to hand over a boss’s seven-year-old child to their mortal enemy was an unforgivable sin.
It violated every code of honor that governed the underworld.
Luca did not shout.
He did not draw his gun.
He simply looked at the woman he had foolishly considered making his wife, the woman who had smiled at him while arranging the sale of his flesh and blood.
“Fifty million dollars,” Luca said, his voice so calm it was chilling.
“You valued my daughter’s life at fifty million dollars?”
Vanessa looked up, her eyes wild, her mind completely shattered by the realization that she had been caught on every single front.
“You were never going to give me real power, Luca!” Vanessa screamed, abandoning all pretense of innocence.
“You treated me like a trophy! A pretty doll to stand on your arm at galas while everything in this empire belonged to Lily!”
She pushed herself up onto her feet, swaying drunkenly as blood dripped from her knees onto her ruined gown.
“Lily! Lily! Lily! Everything was about that little brat!” Vanessa ranted, pointing a shaking, manicured finger at Luca’s chest.
“She isn't even smart! She isn't even special! She’s just the daughter of a dead woman who was too weak to stay alive!”
Before Vanessa could finish the sentence, the sound of a heavy blow echoed through the hall.
SLAP!
The strike was so powerful that Vanessa was lifted off her feet and slammed horizontally onto the marble floor.
It wasn't Luca who had struck her.
It was Carmela Moretti, Luca’s sixty-five-year-old aunt and the matriarch of the family, her eyes blazing with ancestral fury.
“You dirty, ungrateful snake,” Aunt Carmela hissed, adjusting the lace shawl over her shoulders.
“You dare speak the name of Maria Moretti in this house?”
Vanessa lay on the floor, groaning in agony as blood poured from her split lip.
Luca stepped between his aunt and the crumpled woman on the floor.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and pressed a single speed-dial button.
The phone rang twice before a deep, Russian-accented voice answered on speakerphone.
“Speak,” the voice said.
It was Mikhail Volkov.
The ballroom went so quiet you could hear the individual drops of Vanessa’s blood hitting the marble floor.
“Mikhail,” Luca said calmly into the phone.
Silence hung on the line for three agonizing seconds as the Russian boss recognized the voice.
“Luca,” Volkov replied, his tone suddenly tense and guarded.
May you like
“I am calling to inform you that your fifty-million-dollar package on the North Side has been canceled,” Luca said evenly.
“And if any of your rats are currently in the drainage tunnels beneath my mansion, they have exactly thirty seconds to start praying.”
