Chapter 9 - Whispers of the Forgotten Heir
A collective gasp echoed across the grand chamber.
Two older captains at the end of the table reached instinctively toward their coats before remembering the neutrality rule.
Carlo Bellini leaned back in his leather chair, letting out a mocking chuckle.
“An execution?” Carlo sneered.
“By whose authority, boy? You aren't even the head of the Moretti family anymore.”
Carlo looked around the table at the twelve syndicate bosses.
“Gentlemen, as you know, Antonio Moretti passed away three years ago without leaving a legitimate heir.”
The captains shifted uncomfortably, murmuring among themselves.
“What are you talking about, Bellini?” growled Salvatore Falcone, the oldest boss at the table.
“Luca has run the docks and the transport lines since Antonio fell ill. He is Antonio’s son!”
“No,” Carlo announced loudly, standing up from his seat.
“He is not.”
Carlo pulled a white folder from beneath the table and tossed it into the center of the horseshoe.
“Twenty-two years ago, Antonio Moretti was sterile following a gunshot wound in Detroit. Luca is the child of Lucia Moretti and an unnamed street soldier.”
Isabella stood up beside Carlo, nodding in agreement.
“It's true, uncles,” Isabella lied smoothly, looking at the older bosses.
“My mother kept the secret until she died. Luca has no Moretti blood. Under the 1954 Syndicate Charter, an illegitimate pretender cannot hold the family seat.”
Falcone’s bushy eyebrows knitted together.
He looked at Luca with deep concern.
“Is this true, Luca?” Falcone asked.
Luca didn't look at Falcone.
He kept his gray eyes locked onto Carlo Bellini.
“Carlo is half-right,” Luca said.
His voice was steady, resonant, filling every corner of the ballroom.
“I do not have Antonio Moretti’s blood in my veins.”
The room erupted into loud shouting.
Captains slammed their palms onto the table, arguing furiously.
“He admits it!” Isabella shouted over the noise.
“He admits he is an impostor!”
“Let him speak!” Falcone roared, standing up and slamming a heavy brass gavel against the wood.
The room slowly quieted down.
Luca took two steps forward, rounding the edge of the table.
“I do not have Antonio’s blood,” Luca repeated.
“Because my biological father is sitting right in front of me.”
Silence slammed down on the ballroom like a lead weight.
Falcone froze.
The other captains stared in absolute disbelief.
Carlo Bellini’s face hardened into a mask of rage.
“You’re insane,” Carlo hissed.
“You’re desperate and insane.”
“Am I?” Luca reached inside his jacket.
Up on the balcony, four Bellini guards raised their rifles, aiming downward.
Daniel and Matteo immediately drew their handguns, aiming up at the balcony.
“Hold your fire!” Falcone shouted, his face purple with rage.
“No blood in the Grand Ballroom! That is the ancient law!”
Luca slowly pulled out the small cassette tape retrieved from the underground safe beneath St. Jude’s.
He placed it on the table in front of Falcone.
“Play it, Salvatore,” Luca said softly.
Falcone looked at the tape, then gestured to his personal assistant.
The assistant brought forward an antique tape recorder and inserted the cassette.
He pressed the play button.
The hiss of magnetic tape echoed through the ballroom speakers.
Then a voice spoke.
Deep.
Arrogant.
Unmistakably Carlo Bellini from twenty-two years ago:
“The girl Lucia is locked away in Oak Ridge, Antonio. As long as you raise the boy to believe he is your heir, my family will not touch your shipping routes. But on the day he turns thirty-two, my daughter Vanessa will marry him, and both empires will belong to the Bellini bloodline.”
Antonio Moretti’s raspy voice responded:
“And if Lucia speaks?”
Carlo’s recorded laugh was chilling:
“The doctors will ensure she never speaks a coherent sentence again.”
The tape ended with a sharp click.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Every single captain at the table turned their eyes toward Carlo Bellini.
Falcone’s eyes were blazing with ancient Sicilian fury.
“You locked Lucia Moretti in an asylum?” Falcone whispered, his voice trembling with disgust.
“You forced Antonio into an incestuous trap with your own daughter?”
Carlo Bellini looked around the table.
He saw the disgust in the faces of his peers.
He realized in an instant that political diplomacy was dead.
His mask of refinement shattered completely.
“So what if I did?” Carlo sneered, his voice echoing off the high ceiling.
“Antonio was weak! The Moretti family was rotting from the inside!”
May you like
Carlo looked up at the balcony guards.
“Kill them all,” Carlo ordered.
