Chapter 9 - The Matriarch's Accusation
Victoria curled inward, pressing her back against the upholstery, her golden-yellow gown rumpled and ruined beneath her trembling frame.
“Dante... please... it wasn’t what it looks like,” she whimpered, her voice cracking into pathetic, broken fragments.
“I was trying to secure our future! Your mother was losing her mind... she was going to give the family assets to charity!”
“Silence!” Dante spat, the single word cutting through her excuses like a guillotine through rotten cord.
From across the foyer, a soft, trembling movement drew every eye away from the monstrous spectacle in the chair.
Donna Sofia slowly, painfully pushed herself up from her cream armchair, leaning heavily on the wooden armrest for support.
Her dark-purple silk dress swayed as her frail legs found their footing on the cold, unforgiving marble floor.
Her silver hair was disheveled, and the red marks from the gag were still vividly etched into the skin around her mouth.
Dante moved to assist her, but the elderly matriarch raised her uninjured left hand, commanding him to stand down with a single look.
Even broken, even bruised, she was the widow of Salvatore Moretti, and the royal blood of the Chicago family ran thick in her veins.
She took three slow, deliberate steps forward, her dark eyes burning with an ancient, righteous fire that silenced the hall.
She stopped five feet from Victoria, looking down at the shivering socialite who had treated her like cattle.
Sofia raised her left arm, her trembling index finger pointing straight between Victoria’s terrified, wide eyes.
“She wanted everything,” Sofia spoke, her voice raspy from the cloth gag, but ringing with absolute clarity.
“She didn’t just want the real estate, Dante... she whispered in my ear while she tied those ropes around my wrists.”
“She told me that as soon as the ink was dry, she was going to slip digitalis into my evening medication.”
Sofia’s lower lip trembled, but her gaze never wavered from the wretched woman cowering before her.
“She told me I would die of a quiet heart attack while you were in New York, and she would inherit the entire syndicate.”
The revelation hung in the cool air of the entrance hall like a cloud of suffocating poison.
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Dante’s breath stopped completely, his chest locking into place as the full magnitude of the assassination plot hit him.
Victoria’s eyes rolled back slightly in utter horror as she realized her private, whispered confessions had been remembered word for word.
