Chapter 9 - THE SCAR THAT TOLD THE TRUTH
Boots pounded across the terrace outside.
Smoke grenades hissed as they rolled through the broken windows, filling the room with blinding white fog.
“Give me your hand!” Dante shouted over the deafening chaos.
I grabbed his warm, firm grip through the choking smoke.
He hauled me up and dragged me toward a secret panel behind the fireplace.
We tumbled into a narrow brick tunnel just as heavy footsteps swarmed the dining room.
Dante sealed the iron latch behind us.
We stumbled through the damp underground passage until we reached a small, reinforced armory.
Dante flicked on a dim overhead bulb.
He checked my arms for fresh injuries, his touch surprisingly gentle for a feared mafia boss.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“I’m not scared,” I lied, though my teeth were chattering.
“I’m furious.”
Dante pulled a heavy leather journal from a steel lockbox on the workbench.
He handed it to me.
The cover was worn, water-stained, and unmistakably my mother’s handwriting.
“What is this?” I breathed, tracing the faded ink.
“The ledger,” Dante said quietly.
“The one Marco has been killing people to find for twenty years.”
I opened the first page.
Every illegal transaction, every payoff, every murder carried out by Vitelli and senior Moretti was meticulously documented in my mother's neat cursive.
And on the final page was a signed confession notarized in secret.
Marco Vitelli had ordered Joanne Hughes's murder.
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“He wants this book more than he wants my empire,” Dante said, sliding a heavy revolver across the metal desk toward me.
“And now, he knows you have it.”
