Chapter 7 - The Trial in the Drawing Room
The temperature in the grand hall dropped to freezing.
The twelve capos instantly drew their weapons, forming a tight circle around Vincent Moretti and his three European bodyguards. Before Vincent’s men could even reach beneath their jackets, Marco and four estate guards stepped up behind them, disarming them with brutal, practiced swiftness, forcing them to their knees on the marble floor.
"Aleandro! What is the meaning of this?!" Vincent shrieked, his voice cracking into a high-pitched, pathetic squeak. "You’ve lost your mind! The illness has poisoned your brain! I came here out of love for you!"
"Love?" Aleandro said softly.
He raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
The double doors at the rear of the hall opened. Two security guards dragged Dr. Richard Vance into the room. The doctor was bruised, disheveled, weeping uncontrollably, his hands cuffed tightly behind his back.
When Vincent saw Vance, the last remaining trace of color left his face. He looked like a man who had stepped off the edge of a cliff and was waiting for the ground to hit him.
"Tell them, Richard," Aleandro commanded quietly, stepping back to let the capos see the disgraced physician.
Vance dropped to his knees on the marble, trembling violently. "He... he made me do it!" Vance sobbed, pointing his cuffed hands at Vincent. "Vincent Moretti paid me fifty thousand dollars a month for five years! He ordered me to keep Aleandro blind using ciliary toxins! He told me that if Aleandro ever recovered his sight, he would kill my children!"
A collective gasp echoed through the room.
Sal Moretti stepped forward, his face dark with fury, his hand gripping the butt of his .45 revolver. "You dirty bastard," Sal growled at Vincent. "You kept the Boss trapped in the dark for five years?"
"He lies!" Vincent screamed, staring around at the circle of armed men who had served his cousin for decades. "He’s a disgraced doctor trying to save his own skin! You can't take the word of a junkie physician over your own blood!"
"I don't need his word, Vincent," Aleandro said flatly.
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small glass vial containing a tiny speck of dark steel floating in clear alcohol—the microscopic shrapnel fragment Elena had extracted from his eye twelve hours before.
"Five years ago," Aleandro said, holding the vial up for all the capos to see, "a car bomb went off outside the church in Queens. The police told us it was a rival family from Brooklyn. But the bomb wasn't made with commercial dynamite. It was made with a military C4 compound with specialized steel casing—the exact compound your shipping company imported through the Antwerp piers three weeks before the explosion."
Vincent’s knees buckled. He dropped to the floor, gasping for air, staring up at his cousin with wild, frantic eyes.
"I have the offshore bank records, Vincent," Aleandro continued, his voice dropping into a register of terrifying finality. "Marco’s team seized your London server two hours ago. Every wire transfer from C&M Logistics to Dr. Vance’s private account in the Cayman Islands has been documented, printed, and handed to every capo in this room."
Sal Moretti stepped up behind Vincent, placing the cold steel barrel of his revolver directly against the back of Vincent’s neck.
"Give the word, Boss," Sal whispered, his eyes burning with absolute, murderous rage. "We’ll take him out to the Sound right now. He won't even feed the fish when we’re done."
The room fell completely silent. Everyone waited for Aleandro to give the nod—the traditional, lethal sign that had governed the Moretti empire for three generations.
Up on the gallery balcony, Elena stood quietly, holding Mia against her hip. She did not speak. She did not attempt to interfere. But her eyes met Aleandro’s across the wide expanse of the grand hall.
Aleandro looked up at her. He saw the woman who had brought light back into his dark world, the innocent child who had noticed his pupil move when twelve world-renowned specialists had failed.
He looked back down at his cousin weeping on the floor.
"No, Sal," Aleandro said softly.
The capos looked at him in total shock. "No, Boss? He murdered Giuliana! He murdered little Sofia!"
"Death is too quick for him," Aleandro declared, his tone cold, measured, and absolute. "Taking his life in this room gives him an ending. I am not giving him an ending."
Aleandro stepped closer to Vincent, leaning down until his eyes were inches from his cousin’s face.
"You wanted my empire, Vincent," Aleandro whispered. "Now you will spend the rest of your life in a maximum-security federal facility in Colorado. I have already delivered the complete financial ledgers, the wire-tap recordings, and the bomb manifests to the United States Attorney’s office in Manhattan."
Vincent’s eyes widened in horror. "Federal prison? You... you’re giving the family books to the feds?!"
"I am giving your books to the feds," Aleandro corrected him smoothly. "The Moretti shipping lines are being legally restructured under a public charitable foundation today. The dark money is gone, Vincent. The empire you tried to steal doesn't exist anymore."
He stood up, turning his back on his cousin.
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"Take them away, Marco. Deliver them to the FBI field office in Queens."
As Marco’s men dragged Vincent and Vance out of the grand hall, Vincent’s desperate, pathetic screams echoed off the high stone walls until the heavy oak front doors slammed shut, sealing them out forever.
