Vanessa claimed Sophie injured herself on a garage door, until Luca noticed the blood, the wheelchair, and one terrified look that told him his mother was missing. / Chapter 32 / 50

Chapter 32 - Sins of the Patriarch

The war room beneath the safehouse smelled of burnt espresso and unwashed adrenaline.

Maps of the city’s financial district were pinned to corkboards, overlain with blue-line schematics of the Sovereign Tower. Seven capos sat around the steel table, their faces darkened with unease. Men who would trade gunfire with rival cartels without breaking a sweat were visibly trembling.

The word had spread like wildfire: *The Old Don is alive.*

"If Antonio is back..." Capo Vane broke the silence, his scarred hands flat on the mahogany, "...then by the ancient bylaws of the Commission, Luca's seat is void. Blood right reverts to the living father."

A heavy silver blade thudded into the table, pinning Vane’s sleeve to the wood.

Vane jerked back with a gasp, but Luca was already leaning over him, his face inches from the older capo’s nose, eyes burning with unholy fire.

"The bylaws," Luca whispered, his tone silk wrapped in barbed wire, "apply to men of honor. Not cowards who fake their deaths, leave their wives to burn, and crawl back twenty years later behind the skirts of a traitorous whore."

Luca wrenched the blade free and wiped the polished steel on Vane’s lapel.

"My father left me a kingdom of ash and debt. I paid his debts in blood. I built this empire. If any man in this room believes Antonio Moretti is his Don, stand up now and walk out that door."

Silence hung over the room, thick and suffocating. Nobody moved.

"Good," Luca said softly. "Because anyone who walks out that door takes a bullet to the spine."

I stood behind Luca, my fingers resting on the compact submachine gun slung across my ribcage. The simple maid’s uniform I had once worn felt like a past life, a forgotten skin. I was dressed in tactical black, Kevlar hugging my torso, my hands calloused from the weapons drills Luca had forced me through since the North Gate ambush.

"Look at the blueprints," I said, stepping forward and tapping a blueprint section on the wall. The capos turned their gaze to me. They had stopped seeing me as a maid weeks ago; now, they saw the woman who had pulled their Don from burning ruins. "The Sovereign Tower has an isolated power grid. Floors sixty-five through seventy operate on a closed circuit. Antonio isn't just hiding; he’s barricaded behind magnetic blast doors and private air scrubbers."

"And the hostages?" Matteo asked from the doorway.

"Donna Carmela is on the sixty-ninth floor," I said, pointing to the architectural rendering of the private penthouse. "The room matches the original layout of the Old Manor’s study. Antonio recreated it perfectly. It's a monument to his ego. He wants to destroy Luca in the same room where he used to beat him."

Luca’s jaw clenched, a muscle ticking beneath his skin. "Vanessa is his leash on the outside world. Her family’s shipping lanes moved his money. Her father wasn't the mastermind—he was just Antonio’s accountant."

"Which means," I continued, meeting Luca’s gaze, "Vanessa knows every blind spot in our defenses. But she doesn't know that we have the auxiliary codes to the Tower’s freight lifts. The ones buried in the Judas Ledger."

Luca stared at me, a cold, predatory smirk finally breaking through his grim mask. "The maintenance shafts. While he expects us to storm the lobby like a battering ram, we cut through the spine of his fortress."

"Twenty-one hours left," Matteo reminded them grimly.