Chapter 6 - The Unraveling
By three o'clock, the east wing was sealed.
No one entered; no one left. The Palermo boys had replaced the regular villa guards at the iron-studded doors, their submachine guns held casually across their chests, their faces like carved limestone.
I did not go to Valentina immediately. Power requires patience. If you strike too fast, the target dies before they realize how thoroughly they have lost. I spent two hours in the basement archives with Matteo, opening safes that hadn't seen daylight since my grandfather’s time.
The ledgers Chiara had found were right where Valentina’s sloppy bookkeeping left them—hidden behind a false panel in the wall of the old wine cellar, disguised as a register of nineteenth-century olive oil shipments.
The numbers didn't lie. For six years before her death, Chiara had been tracking the missing revenue from the port of Naples. She had traced every missing container, every unrecorded cargo drop, straight to a shell company registered in Zurich under a name Valentina used when she traveled to Switzerland for her “health.”
My sister hadn't just been stealing from the family. She had been building her own syndicate, using Moretti money, Moretti guns, and Moretti blood to carve out an independent empire that would outlive me.
When I finished reading the last page, I closed the leather-bound book. The sound was very soft in the damp quiet of the cellar.
Matteo watched me, his face grim. What about the Santoro family? If your sister was cutting deals with them on our northern routes, they’re going to expect delivery of the docks in Genoa next month.
Let them come to the docks, I said. I have a message to deliver to Genoa.
At five o'clock, I walked up to the east wing alone.
The guards stepped aside without a word, unlocking the heavy oak door with a key they had just received from my own hand.
Valentina was still at her vanity table. She hadn't changed her robe. She hadn't lit the lamps, even though the sun was sinking behind the hills, turning the sky the color of a bruised plum. The room was dark, filled with the long, creeping shadows of the evening.
You look tired, Dante, she said, her voice smooth and brittle as old glass. Locking me in my own rooms won't change the ports. The papers are already filed in Zurich. If I die, the syndicates take everything within forty-eight hours. You’ll be left with a pile of rocks and a dead wife’s ghost.
I walked over to the vanity, picked up her silver hairbrush, and set it down on the tray.
You always were too smart for your own good, Valentina, I said, leaning against the edge of the dressing table, looking down at her. You thought because I didn't check the ledgers myself, I didn't know how to read the bottom line.
She didn't flinch. She just tilted her chin up, that familiar Moretti arrogance flashing in her eyes. And Chiara? Did you enjoy listening to her weep on that little tape? She was weak, Dante. She didn't belong in this house. She would have dragged us all down to the dirt with her little village songs and her bleeding heart.
She was the only honest person in this villa, I said quietly.
And I am the only one who kept you alive this long.
You didn't keep me alive, sister. You kept me blind so you could run the empire while I played the grieving widower.
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the dictaphone, setting it right on top of her silver hairbrush.
The tape is copies in Zurich, Matteo’s office, and three safety deposit boxes in Rome. If I stop breathing tonight, the entire council gets the files before midnight. Your friends in Calabria won't even buy you a cheap pine box when they find out what you’ve been selling them.
For the first time since I entered the room, Valentina’s hand twitched. Her fingers curled into the silk of her lavender robe.
What do you want, Dante? A confession? An apology?
No, I said, straightening up and walking toward the door. Apologies are for church.
May you like
Where are you going?
To talk to the child, I said without turning around. She found the tape. The least I can do is buy her an ice cream in the village before the sun goes down.
