Chapter 41 - The Dead Speak
The silence in the corridor was heavier than the gunfire that had preceded it.
The gold burner phone sat in Vincent’s bloody palm, its screen dark, but the phantom of Don Antonio’s voice still echoed through the shattered plaster and dripping rain. Six years. For six years, Vincent had believed his grandfather was buried beneath five feet of marble in the family crypt outside Palermo. Everything Vincent had built, every rule he had broken to protect us, had been done under the shadow of a dead patriarch who was never dead at all.
On the floor, Dante let out a wet, rattling laugh. His right hand remained pinned to the doorframe by the jagged splinter of steel, blood pooling around his knees.
"You look pale, Vincent," Dante rasped, his teeth stained red. "You thought you were the king of the board. You were just holding the seat warm until the old man decided the bloodline needed pruning."
Vincent didn’t blink. His expression was carved from slate, but I saw the subtle tremor in his jaw—the telltale crack in his armor that only someone who had watched him every day for weeks could spot.
"Elena," Vincent commanded, his voice dead and level. "Take Maya into the back room. Pack only the medical kit and the primary passports."
Maya was pressed against my legs, her small fingers clutching the hem of my coat so tightly her knuckles were white. Her breath hitched, shallow and erratic. The shock of the blast and the acrid smell of cordite was too much for her fragile lungs; I could hear the faint, terrifying whistle in her chest.
"Vincent," I said softly, stepping between him and Dante. "Look at him. He’s already broken. If Antonio wants Maya, it’s not just about tradition. Dante knows what Antonio promised him."
Dante’s sneer faltered.
Vincent looked down at the traitor. Without a word, he holstered his sidearm, reached out, and wrenched the steel spike from Dante’s arm with one brutal motion. Dante screamed, collapsing into his own blood. Vincent grabbed him by the collar, dragging his heavy frame across the floor toward the window where the flashing blue lights of the police cruisers were beginning to paint the wet asphalt below.
"You have ten seconds to tell me the extraction point Antonio set for you," Vincent whispered into his ear. "Or you take the fast way down to the pavement."
"He... he didn't give me an extraction," Dante wheezed, clutching his ruined arm to his chest. "He gave me a drop box in Marseille. A biometric key. It opens the vault where your mother’s original will was sealed... the one that left the entire Moretti Syndicate directly to Maya, bypassing you and Antonio."
My heart stopped.
I looked at Vincent. The cold certainty on his face shattered completely. Dante wasn't just working for an old monster out of loyalty. Don Antonio didn't want Maya to raise her as an heir; he wanted her dead because her very existence stripped the old man of his legal and criminal throne.
"Marseille," Vincent muttered.
May you like
From the street below, the heavy slam of car doors and megaphone commands echoed up the stairwell. The local authorities were breaching the lobby.
Vincent let Dante drop to the floor. "He stays. Elena, we run."
